I’ve had Jason Statham on my mind recently. I love the guy, and have an enormous amount of good will towards him, but I still haven’t gone to see several of his last few films in theaters. This wasn’t some kind of intentional boycott or anything like that, and to be honest I hadn’t even realized how many of Statham’s most recent films I had missed until our own Victor Pryor highlighted what he calls The Statham Problem.
Several years back, when Statham exploded onto international screens as a re-branded action star in The Transporter, I felt certain he was destined to spearhead a new era of action heroes. But this new class of hero (Statham, Diesel, maybe even The Rock) never quite rose to A-list superstardom like I dreamed they would, becoming modern day Stallones. Statham is a reliable brand in and of himself, but recently that brand has been perilously close to dropping out of cinemas altogether and joining the Van Dammes and Seagals of the world in DTV purgatory. In Victor’s piece, he makes the claim that Statham has fallen into a rut of samey-ness which has frankly caused many of us to, whether actively or inactively, decide “I’ll just catch that on DVD.”
If I’m being honest with myself, I have to admit that I’m one of those people. Although I consider action cinema my genre of choice, and count myself a huge Statham fan, he has become a much lower priority for me than I would ever have imagined just a few short years ago. All of this build up is to make one of most important points that I have to make regarding Statham’s latest: Redemption. And that point? Redemption is exactly the kind of movie Statham needs to be making in order to navigate his career out of the prison of “samey-ness.”
While I would be happy to see Statham remain upon his pedestal amongst the pantheon of modern action heroes, he needs to keep us on our toes a little bit. And Statham’s performance in Redemption highlights a range that we don’t always see. Playing a homeless and PTSD-riddled former soldier who is living on the streets, Statham sheds much of his smooth mystique and chiseled physique to bring us Joey. Joey stumbles away from a brutal beating on the streets and finds his way into the secluded apartment of a rich artist who is away travelling. With a new place to live, a wardrobe that fits him just right, and a debit card in the mailbox, Joey has a new shot at life which he plans to use in his own unique way in the underbelly of London’s criminal back alleys.
So yes, I’d say Statham made a good choice here. Joey is a character dissimilar to much of the rest of his oeuvre. And he has opportunities to flex his dramatic and sympathetic chops throughout. And although he’ll also have a few moments to do cool and collected violence as only Statham really can, this is not an action film. I’d bet Statham jumped at the chance to work with writer/director Steven Knight, who had previously written Dirty Pretty Things and Eastern Promises but had yet to direct anything himself. And here is where I’d suggest much of the problem with Redemption lies.
The screenplay for Redemption is lacking in subtlety and authenticity. Throughout the film I kept finding myself distracted by how much “telling not showing” was going on. Characters just say whatever is on their minds in a very blunt and non-cinematic way. I’m all for bluntness, but it has to ring true. And the repeated instances of in-authenticity shocked me coming from the writer of such gritty and eye-opening fare as Dirty Pretty Things and Eastern Promises.
The central relationship of the film is between Statham’s Joey and a young Catholic nun who had treated Joey well while he was on the streets named Cristina (Agata Buzek.) Joey begins showering Cristina’s soup kitchen with gifts and cash because of one of the most interesting plot developments: Joey ends up working as an enforcer for the Chinese mafia. This works really well to keep things interesting as criminals and cops alike are very confused about this English White man who seems to be representing the Chinese gang. I thought that was clever.
And there is a big part of me that really wanted to buy the whole relationship arc between Joey and Cristina, but when you are working with a nun and a street rat, you are painting on the broadest of possible canvases, and extreme subtlety is needed to pull off an authentic-feeling relationship. There are some moments where Cristina really acts as a strong moral compass for Joey, telling him straight to his face when he is acting like a hypocrite. I liked those moments. And when Cristina begins to open up to Joey about her own scarred past, the story is more intriguing than it is actually successfully pulled off on screen.
Redemption feels a lot longer than it really is (100 min.) and just tries to tackle way too much. You’ve got themes of PTSD, alcoholism, homelessness, gangland activity, organized religion, sexual abuse, religious doubt, cops and robbers, sexual deviancy, and of course, the complexity of the road to redemption all going on in this script. Joey and Cristina collide against each other in occasionally interesting ways, but the film hinges upon a bunch of things that just massively decrease the authenticity factor, such as a number of unrelated events all leading up to and culminating on one particular night, October 1st. Cristina desperately wants to attend a ballet that night, which just also happens to be the same day that the owner of Joey’s squatter kingdom is coming back into town. Oh, and a guy that Joey has been tracking down with an eye on vengeance also happens to have tickets to this same ballet. This is just one instance of many that I found too convenient or too “clearly written by a screenwriter” to buy into as an audience member.
So, somewhere amidst the footage of the film which was once titled Hummingbird (a vastly superior title to the generic “Redemption”) I believe there is a successful film to be found. There are enough interesting plot developments and layers to both Joey and Cristina that perhaps a few more revisions of the screenplay or a ground-up re-edit could have exploited to a better result.
And I have to give a certain amount of credit to Knight for offering up an ending that is not super-tidy or Hollywood, especially for a film re-titled Redemption. I won’t go into any details or spoilers other than to say I was surprised by how the film ended and feel it goes out with a gutsy, morally complex, and ambiguous bang while much of the film plodded along with a muddled whimper.
Redemption feels like a solid career move for Statham, and maybe a hard-lesson-learned film for Steven Knight.
Note: Although Redemption is playing theatrically in many cities as of June 28th and available to rent on demand, I saw the film via a press screener link that really didn’t have a high quality resolution. This had an impact upon my investment in the final product. I genuinely think if the film had looked great and sounded great and I had been sitting in a dark theater, I might have had a better experience with Redemption, but I still know I couldn’t have offered a caveat-free endorsement as too many of my issues were so clearly tied to the screenplay and direction of the final film rather than the visuals or the sound.
And I’m Out.
