Boy Movies #41

The Jason Statham issue

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I drove a car off a freeway… on top of a train… while I was on fire

There is exactly one great line reading in The Meg, a movie from 2018 that dares to ask, “What if Jaws but bigger?” The single great line is delivered by Jason Statham — the actor tasked with the enormous responsibility of starring opposite the very Meg, and also the actor who everyone involved with this production looked at and unanimously agreed should play a character named “Jonas Taylor” — and is spoken to his love interest, moments after she lost her father in a tragic Meg accident.

“Sometimes,” he growls Britishly, “things happen that change your life forever.”

Literally sometimes things happen that change your life forever. Period.

First of all, like, duh? Thanks? Second of all, who would be comforted by someone saying that, moments after watching a parent get Megged to death? What makes it great is that Statham shows no sign of awareness that this is a preposterous, meaningless thing to say. He delivers it soberly, the gravelly timbre of his voice pitched low, his brow furrowed, his expression twisted semi-sympathetically: Shit sure does happen. This moment is, in fact, a perfect case study into why I find Statham so appealing. Sometimes things happen that change your life forever, but there’s still a bigass fish to fight so can we move on, please?

this is so true

There is no gentle grace to Jason Statham, no artfully masked emotions bubbling just beneath the surface. If a Statham character is feeling anything, it is typically rage, or incredulity, or mirth, or a wry cocktail of the three. He fills frames with the wide-shouldered presence of a former athlete. He’s got that dark, sharp gaze. Even when he smiles he seems put-upon, world-weary, like he’s already anticipating the next fight. He is not the type of actor to dramatically transform his body, or even his voice, for a role. Rather, he picks projects that allow him to come as he is, which explains why his filmography is littered with titles like Blitz and Killer Elite and War. He’s a buff Englishman who is always playing buff Englishmen. He’s a rare multi-franchise star who hasn’t been profiled to death, but he also doesn’t feign an air of mystery. Statham stands as an uncomplicated vessel of masculinity in its most traditional sense. Virile, but not vulnerable. He is, in many ways, our greatest living boy actor.

Alongside Dwayne Johnson and Vin Diesel, Statham is one third of an internationally beloved trio of bald action stars. All three can open a movie overseas, and all three populate various corners of the Fast and Furious extended universe. Statham and Johnson’s antagonistic on-screen chemistry proved so potent that the powers that be even attempted to give their characters their own homoerotic off-shoot, separate from the rest of the franchise, with Hobbs and Shaw, a baffling piece of shit starring Vanessa Kirby’s old face as The Rock’s love interest. (Ask me anything about Hobbs and Shaw, which I’ve seen twice and have brazenly given three and a half stars on Letterboxd.¹) It was so underwhelming that the sequel was shelved indefinitely, and eventually resulted in Johnson begrudgingly putting his feud with Diesel aside and Kim Cattrall-ing his way back into the main Fast and Furious story in Fast X. Throughout this whole saga, not a peep was heard from Statham, who also returned for Fast X, though with significantly less fanfare. He promoted it the same way he promotes all of his films: dutifully, if enigmatically.

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That level of unknowability is what makes Statham such a top tier boy actor. It’s not just that he clenches his jaw and crashes cars and muscles his way through sprawling battle scenes in films. How he behaves off-screen factors in: He doesn’t tweet or make TikToks; he doesn’t even follow his model wife on Instagram. He doesn’t call the paparazzi on himself. He doesn’t take sides when his co-stars are engaging in petty infighting, ala Tyrese Gibson. The only “scandal” he’s ever been involved in and apologized for (he was accused of saying gay slurs in 2018 but, like, by some guy who apparently approached him claiming to have a recording no one ever saw???) was too confusing to be a cancellable offense. Where Diesel is too unabashedly eccentric and The Rock too earnestly confident, Statham gives nothing away. You get the sense that when he signs on to do a movie, he shows up, goes to work, and goes home.² He’s the embodiment of the played out “men used to go to war” meme: Men used to make action movies and keep their mouths shut.

In 2015, Esquire dubbed him “the last action star.” It’s easy to see where they were coming from; even friend of the newsletter Tom Cruise, who seems hellbent on meeting his end doing an ill-advised stunt, dabbles in other genres from time to time. You’d never catch Statham in a Top Gun: Maverick-esque dad-friendly tearjerker, for instance, an assessment I’m sure he would agree with:

"I've never had a fucking acting lesson; no one's telling me how to act," he says. "Would it be better for Daniel Day-Lewis to play Lincoln than me?" He laughs at the prospect. "I think so." And as he drifts off that next laugh, he adds: "But no one's asked me to play Lincoln, and I'm not too worried about not getting the offer."

Interestingly, this Esquire interview was part of the promotional cycle for Spy, a great film that Statham is excellent in. Aside from his early work with Guy Ritchie, which I would argue feels in line with the roles he would become famous for later in his career, this was Statham’s single instance of going off the beaten path. A Paul Feig-directed comedy starring Melissa McCarthy as an underestimated CIA operative and Statham as the burned agent she keeps finding herself working with³, Spy was released the same year as Furious 7, which was — you’re never going to believe this — a much bigger hit.

It was a curveball for Statham, who typically plays everything so straight and was nonetheless game to riff on his own persona. (“I make a habit of doing things people say I can’t do: walk through fire, waterski blind-folded, take up piano at a late age.”) It’s the kind of movie that makes people like you and I say, “Why doesn’t he do more movies like this?” The answer is because he literally doesn’t want to. And that is the ultimate boy actor conundrum: There’s potential to “do more,” but 1. What does that mean? Are action movies not respectable forms of entertainment? Will I not be seated for Meg 2: The Trench? (I will.) 2. Does a boy actor risk sacrificing his mantle by exploring whatever that “more” is? Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know that Statham is too curious to find out — another thing that makes him a true boy actor.

Sometimes things happen that change your life forever, and sometimes you’re just banking a job between Expendables sequels. If you ask me, Statham has it all figured it out.

• Wait, I take it back, I actually have a million-dollar idea for a movie starring these two as Star Is Born-style brothers:

  

1. I could write an entire issue about the collection of awful, sometimes offensive boy movies I genuinely love, but I don’t want you all losing what little respect you have for me.

2. We in the TV biz call this “Macfadyening.”

3. Remember how hot they were together…