Why spend a fortune on Netflix actioners when studio discards pull in solid viewership for potentially a fraction of the price? Meanwhile, in a skewed irony, Anthony Mackie’s Outside The Wire (a Netflix original) is now sitting below the Open Road/Millennium studio programmer. I’ve written my share of posts about films like Jennifer Garner’s Peppermint and Zoe Saldana’s Colombiana being momentarily popular, and Liam Neeson’s Unknown had a run near the top just before Honest Thief opened theatrically last week.
While Statham’s young daughter does get damsel-ed in the third act, it’s almost accidental and the cat lives.Īs far as its momentary popularity on Netflix, it’s their most-watched movie at the moment, it’s another example of the streaming platform being just as popular (if not more so) for old-school grindhouse action flicks as prestige TV and network binge favorites. It’s a B-movie with an unusually stacked cast and unusually specific characters amid a conventional (but refreshingly logical) narrative. Baxley flick (Statham, undercover with racist drug dealers, riding a motorcycle as his long hair flows in the wind), the picture doesn’t really go “full Statham” until its final thirty minutes. After a violent prologue which feels right out of a Craig R. Homefront feels like a hybrid of Stallone’s earliest work and his latter-day action flicks, as it’s a character drama with action as opposed to an outright adventure flick. The stereotype of Stallone as an “action guy” didn’t really kick in until Rambo: First Blood Part II in 1985 and Cobra in 1986. Heck, even First Blood was a survivalist action drama about a PTSD-stricken Vietnam vet lashing out at small-town locals.
(a Teamsters drama) and Paradise Alley (a 40’s-set drama about three Hells Kitchen brothers who get involved in professional wrestling). His post- Rocky flicks were dramas like Escape to Victory (a film about POWs playing soccer), F.I.S.T. It’s a reminder that Sylvester Stallone A) is very intelligent and thoughtful about the movie business, B) wrote the first Rocky movie and directed the first three sequels, and C) didn’t make a truly bad movie until Staying Alive in 1983. Ryder is having fun and Franco especially relishes his small-time criminal who eventually realizes that he’s the villain in his own story. Everyone brings their A-game, including Statham who knows not try to upstage the more colorful supporting cast. There’s a skewed realism to the melodrama, including an emphasis on de-escalation and plausible reactions to the dust-ups. The film, directed by Gary Fleder ( Kiss the Girls and Things to Do In Denver When You’re Dead) and written by, yes again, Sylvester Stallone, keeps the focus on character and plausible human interaction. It also has a ridiculously overqualified cast, including Frank Grillo as one of the baddies, Clancy Brown as the sheriff and, yes, Winona Ryder as Franco’s strung-out girlfriend. It’s a pretty damn stylish action drama that emphasizes the “drama” over the action. It also works as a meditation on modern masculinity and male ego without using a yellow highlighter.
It’s like Carnage or The Slap, but with explosions, fisticuffs and shoot-outs.
While the kids eventually make up, the grownups have a harder time letting go, and, well, action and violence eventually ensues. A schoolyard altercation between his kid (Izabela Vidovic) and a young bully leads to conflict with the kid’s mother (Kate Bosworth), who is both a meth addict and the brother of a local small-time dealer (James Franco).
Homefront concerns a retired DEA agent who moves with his daughter back to his late wife/her late mother’s hometown. It earned less than The Killer Elite ($57 million in 2011), but that Statham/Clive Owen/Robert De Niro action spectacular cost a whopping $70 million. The film actually grossed more worldwide than the likes of The Transporter ($44 million in 2002), Safe (my personal favorite among Statham’s solo action vehicles, which grossed $40 million in 2012) and the Jennifer Lopez co-starring Parker ($47 million in 2013). Judging by the theatrical box office ($48 million worldwide but on a $22 million budget in 2013), you probably didn’t see Homefront.
This isn’t a surprise, but at least one of Jason Statham’s best movies, especially among his “action movies,” is getting a bigger audience for at least the next few days.