Blitz
Director: Elliot Lester
Starring: Jason Statham, Paddy Considine, Aidan Gillen
Pity Jason Statham. The 43-year-old action man is trying so hard to break free of the B-list heroics that made his name in movies such as The Transporter, Crank and Death Race. In this year alone, he's starred as a taciturn hitman opposite Donald Sutherland in The Mechanic, and now he's playing a world-weary London copper in Blitz, a stylish literary adaptation from a series of Ken Bruen pulp crime novels. And yet, even here Statham's screen trademark is also his greatest flaw - he refuses to let himself be vulnerable, to even the slightest degree. Thus, as Detective Sergeant Tom Brant, he finds himself hot on the trail of a nutty London serial killer called Porter Nash, aka Blitz (Paddy Considine). Anyone else might be profoundly shaken by the evil he uncovers along the way. Anyone else might be anxious about the prospect of a mano-a-mano encounter with Blitz. But no, not our Jason/Brant. Instead he thumps, kicks and chops his way soullessly through every conflict, never stopping once to show fear or appear in any particular danger, and pausing only to quip, as he does to a luckless gang of car thieves, "If you're going to pick the wrong fight, at least pick the right weapon!" Which may be great for his reputation as a big-screen hard man, but it's not doing his movies any favours (when there's no danger, there's no tension, and certainly no drama).
