I'd say that was probably more boring, but dumb. This has more action, but all of it is really loud and annoying.
Edit, spoilers, cos fuck it.
Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show)
Statham has many careers in this. He's a cage fighter for one shot that lasts ten seconds. He's meant to throw a fight, but doesn't knocking out some kid from youtube with one punch, putting him in a coma. He goes to fight the guys that set up the match, and they tell him some gangsters are after him cos he lost them a million dollars. He rushes home to find his pregnant wife killed by gangsters, who say they've read his "file" and he was apparently a garbage man with good benefits. I should point out, that up until this point, the film has been pretty good and edited really well, quickly setting up what you think is going to be a nice, simple action movie: Garbageman/Cage Fighter has to protect girl with super memory from Dave Lopan and some guy that looks like Rodney Dangerfield.
...Then the russian gangsters enact an insane plan to not kill him, so they just "watch him" and kill anyone he talks to or remotely makes small talk with. So he becomes a tramp. While out and about he gets kicked out of a coffee shop for not having enough money, that leads to him getting found by some cops, he beat the shit out of him and explain he was the best cop they knew who ruined some weird crime thing they had going, and they were betting on him killing himself. So, after his beatdown, he's at the subway about to commit suicide when he sees the young girl and he changes his mind, but he sees some gangsters after her, and goes on stupid chase and murders one of them in cold blood. And then it gets worse and more complicated. He has some corrupt cop friends, the mayor is involved, the mayors aid is involved. You also find out that Statham was at some point on a super task force of cops to stop the gaps in crime when other forces are fighting terrorism on the Mayors order. Now, this could be so dumb it's fun, but it's so badly done, so fucking WITLESS, that you just assume the writer/director is retarded and genuinely thinks he's making a good movie.
Oh and, this should be fair warning, don't go seeing this expecting The Transporter or even Mercury Rising. It's nothing compared to those movies. It pretty much drops the entire protect the girl plot when statham gets the numbers off of her and then goes and finds his weird corrupt cop buddies to storm a casino and break into a safe BECAUSE THOSE ARE THE NUMBERS. It's got some terrible acting by one of the cops, I dunno who played him, but he keeps chewing a tooth pick in an embarrassing way. That part also leads to the worst shot gunfight I've seen in forever and a hilarious "suiting up" scene. Statham, our hero up until this point pretty much outright kills fucking huge numbers of random people at the casino, just cos they work there. Then it switches to some conspiracy thing where we find out the Mayors aid was behind it all along? I dunno. I don't think the film even knows.
Poor Statham, he's a long, long way away from Lock, Stock & Snatch.
I really wouldn't take Gabe's advice on this. He liked Ghost Rider 2, which was equally shit. I'm not 100% sure he should be reviewing movies. He's making horrible recommendations and potentially wasting people's money and misleading them.
Edited by SeanCE - 5/6/12 at 5:50pm
