As Meg 2 is currently swimming the cinematic high seas, it feels like the perfect time to anchor this terrible metaphor and remember what Jason Statham was up to before he fought CGI sharks for a living. A decade ago The Stath was making the type of uncomplicated and hugely enjoyable action movies that felt like a throwback to the heyday of Stallone, Schwarzenegger or Van Damme. And one of his best, most overlooked efforts is Safe.
Statham plays Luke Wright, a man with an interesting career history: black ops soldier turned city cop turned cage fighter. After accidentally leaving an opponent hospitalised in what was meant to be a fixed fight, Luke is punished by the Russian mafia, who kill his wife and tell him that anyone he so much as speaks to, from that moment on, will be killed.
Cut to one year later and Luke is living a solitary existence on the streets. While contemplating suicide, he comes to the assistance of Mei (Catherine Chan), a young girl who is being pursued by a group of thugs. Mei is a maths prodigy who is being forced to work for triad boss Han Jiao (James Hong). She has memorised a long numerical code that the triad, Russian mafia and a cadre of corrupt city cops will stop at nothing to obtain. Luke and Mei have no choice but to go on the run and crack the code first.
The question of whether to watch Safe can be boiled down to one simple question: do you want to watch Jason Statham beat up a man with a dinner plate? If the answer is “no”, walk away now – I wish you all the best. If the answer is “yes”, then congratulations and here’s all the crockery-based combat you’ve been looking for.
Statham’s extraordinary ability to punch people in the face is combined here with excellent fight choreography from future John Wick director Chad Stahelski. Indeed, Safe feels somewhat like a proto-John Wick, with its Russian gangster angle, taciturn martial artist hero and a wealth of indiscriminate and unnecessary bloodshed.
Statham’s gruff appeal should also not be overlooked. Combining steely menace with geezer-down-the-pub amiability, he could either snap your neck with his little finger, or buy you a pint. He tries out a US accent at the beginning of the movie, but by about halfway through he’s forgotten all about it. But it matters not, for his real accent suits the hard-boiled, quasi-noir dialogue down to the ground: “I’ve been in restaurants all night. All I got served was lead.”
Luke’s relationship with Mei has more depth than you might expect from a beat-em-up: she learns how to trust someone while he re-establishes a connection with the world. But Safe never becomes saccharine and avoids any predictable surrogate father-daughter dynamics.
The cast is an impressive roster of character actors, featuring the likes of the excellent Chris Sarandon (The Princess Bride, Fright Night) and a pre-Star Trek Anson Mount. Chief among them is Hong as the sinister triad kingpin Han Jiao. Hong recently received deserved acclaim for his role in Everything Everywhere All At Once, but he’s the quintessential “oh, it’s that guy” actor. With a vast filmography and an immediately recognisable voice, Hong has appeared in everything from Blade Runner to Seinfeld to (personal favourite) Big Trouble In Little China. It’s great to see him relishing a larger role in Safe.
With the unrelenting success of the Fast & Furious franchise and with Statham branching out into comedy with Spy and Hobbs & Shaw, it’s hard to predict if we’ll get a return to the low-key bruisers he used to make, a body of work I like to call “Classic Stath”. But if you’re looking for a prime example of how he staked his claim as one of the best action stars around, then this is a pretty safe bet.
Safe is streaming on Netflix. For more recommendations of what to stream in Australia, click here
