Safe

Are we making these again? There's something about a hardened New York detective whose tough edges are softened when he is forced to team up with a kid to take down some foreign bad guys that smells like the 80s, but admittedly no particular film comes to mind. Safe is what you can expect from a Jason Statham movie now – cheesy dialogue, fun action, dumb story.

"Luke's a killer... but he's an honest one," is how grumpy ex NYPD detective-turned-cage fighter (yeah, you read that correctly) Luke Wright is described. When Luke (Statham) cripples an opponent in a fight he was supposed to throw, gambling Russian mobsters kill his wife and child in revenge but leave him alive for him to wallow in grief (a bizarre move in a movie of bizarre moves). Suicidal, Luke finds a reason for living when he saves 11-year-old genius Mei (Chan) from some Triads; Mei has a photographic memory and holds the impossible-to-remember code to something in her head. With the Russians and the Chinese on his case, the last thing Luke needs is his greedy, corrupt cops chasing him down too.

So, not only has Jason Statham pulled off that hard to do trick and be a believable British action hero, he's fast becoming his own genre too: 'Yeah, I like comedy, sci-fi and Jason Statham'. Statham doesn't even bother trying to mask the Cockney accent here even though he's playing a New York detective and has fun spitting out the cringey one-liners: "I've been in restaurants all night and all I got served was lead." His Luke Wright seems to have been lifted from a Godfrey Ho flick; the Honk Kong director was (in)famous for writing cheap dialogue for paper-thin characters called Brad who are detectives skilled in martial arts, necessary for taking down evil businessmen with mobile phones bigger than bricks and who were also skilled in martial arts. Here, Statham is none more skilled in martial arts and director Yakin (Remember The Titans) finds numerous reasons for him to use them.

The action is fun and at times relentless but when Statham isn't on screen, which happens a lot considering the Triads, Russians and cops all need their screen time too, Safe loses whatever fun it has. The cheesy dialogue only works when the big man is on screen. It's great to see Big Trouble In Little China's James Hong back playing a bad guy, though.