Jason Statham in Transporter 2 Photo: Alamy
Jason Statham's latest film, The Beekeeper, is a textbook classic of its kind . . What form is this? To get the point, you only need to see one top-notch example: a revenge thriller in which Jason Statham gets angry, speaks tersely, and litters the screen with the corpses of everyone stupid enough to fight him.
In this case Stat's sights are set on a cartel of cyber-fraudsters who have been scamming elderly women out of their pensions — a sort of unassailable carte blanche for Statham's rampant rampage, which has been padding screenwriters' wallets ever since he became a viable action star.
His exact modus operandi varies from role to role. Among the scenes of fingers being cut off and crushed, S.W.A.T. teams descend down elevator shafts, David Ayer's delightfully absurd film is the only film to date in which Statham deliberately incapacitated a deadly enemy by throwing a jar of honey at her head and then calmly setting her soaked body on fire. Wait – honey burns?! Apparently, only the cleanest.
For Statham fans, The Beekeeper is a real bona fide hit. «Who the hell are you, Winnie the Pooh?» asks the FBI agent, a perfect line for Statham's cheerless face as he calmly replies, «I keep bees.» He's in the literal beekeeper sense, but also in the secret agent sense, a former special forces soldier who has signed a blood oath to «protect the hive» — a concept that never becomes clear no matter how many times Kurt's (Equilibrium) Wimmer's idiot script talks about it.
Somehow, this crazy cocktail of bee trivia and indiscriminate slaughter is weird enough to work. It certainly worked at the box office. Prior to the current dominance of Dune: Part Two, The Beekeeper managed to secure the top spot as the No. 1 hit of 2024, earning more than $150 million worldwide—a figure that surprised analysts considering the film released to minimal hype. (sorry) in the second week of January.
For this, Statham received a whopping $25 million salary, which he could earn thanks to the 2023 banner, in which he starred in the films Fast and Furious X, The Expendables and The Meg 2: The Trench, earning the same amount for each (even if Expend4bles, through no fault of its own, failed, and Fast X did worse). As a result of all this, he became one of the ten highest paid actors in Hollywood according to Forbes in 2023. His $42 million income is slightly lower than Margot Robbie or Tom Cruise, but higher than Denzel Washington and Ben Affleck.
The 56-year-old's struggling career has now easily outdone model Bruce Willis in kicking his bald ass. How did he do it?
Besides avoiding the smirking look of smugness that made us tired of Willis in the long run, the hair is an integral part of him. Statham's stubble is vital to his appeal, as it has so cemented an aspect of his now unsinkable brand that his characters accessorize at their own peril.
A couple of times — see Hummingbird (2013) and Up Front (2013) — there was a messy hairstyle at the beginning of the film. If these machines have any understanding of their star, they must abide by Statham's eternal Wig Law, which is the exact opposite of Chekhov's Gun. After the first act he should disappear and never appear again, ideally in slow motion to show him cleaning up his act.
Jason Statham in Guy Ritchie's revolver Photo: Alamy
There are films that break this law, and this heresy is one of the worst in Statham's history. Guy Ritchie's Revolver (2005) has many, many ideas beyond its ridiculous premise, but the long black wig on the main character's head somehow instantly becomes a totem of his pretentiousness. This is simply wrong.
Absolutely no one, meanwhile, saw Statham's contribution to the low-budget American indie London (also 2005 was not a good year), but Google Image check is possible on Willis. The Sixth Sense-wig-manke is used here and it explains more or less everything.
Although Statham's recruitment into Fast & 2013's Furious Saga was easily his biggest box office hit. In his time, he made a good couple of dozen profitable films, largely because his overhead was low and his formula simple. He's disciplined, knows his brand and has simmering, restrained star power, making him easy to underestimate: exports from Sydenham, south-east London or even the UK have rarely achieved such great success.
< p>By now Statham and his management realizes that his glory depends on certain things being reliable and simple. For this reason, the titles of his films contain as few words as possible, ideally only one. (He actually created a movie called The One. It's terrible.)
Jason Statham in The Meg 2 » Photo: AP
As Meg further demonstrates, he lacks certain pronouns. But you'll never catch him in Anything, Being Anything or similar nonsense.
His work of choice: The Transporter (2002). Mechanic (2011). Banking Job (2008). Spy (2015). (And for some reason now the Beekeeper too.) His men of action have marketable skills and advertise them with a minimum of fuss and verbiage. About the same as the star itself.
Statham isn't much of a fan of giving interviews, but every now and then a film needs his help — Hummingbird was one such film, and the neo-Kem drama Parker (2013) was another. During these short commercial breaks, he comes out and explains himself, revealing a career plan based largely on common sense. «You can't open a sushi restaurant and then add cheese toasties to the menu,» he told the Guardian in 2013.
In his own films the opposite is undoubtedly true, but he meant it to excuse his absence from working with rare writers. Take Todd Haynes: you won't catch Statham dead in Carol, Velvet Goldmine or I'm Not There. He is always very There. (His 2012 Safe is not a remake.)
Since his first dream of becoming a stuntman, Statham has embraced the physical side of his job with resigned obsequiousness and loves learning new tricks. He dropped his body fat to an astonishing 6 percent to prepare for Death Race (2008). Even before he became an actor, he peaked among trivia fans by being ranked the 12th best jumper in the world, but his Olympic hopes were dashed in the early 1990s.
And that leaves a wish list, as he once told Men's Journal. “One thing I've never tried to do is fly one of these wing [suits] […] off a cliff and do a close-up flight where they peel a layer of skin off their chin by flying close to the rock formations «While some of us are shaking ourselves off from Anthony Trollope, he can handle it.
What makes Statham profitable is a no-nonsense approach to his heroic action films that never gets too self-serious, but doesn't flaunt its self-mockery either. He always has an impassive face. Compared to his Fast & Furious co-star Dwayne Johnson, who has long been in danger of becoming too much in every way — flexing his muscles, mugging in front of the camera, practically singing to his fans mid-film — Statham keeps his cool.
Their verbal squabbles have a fun homoerotic quality to them. shade, but it's Johnson who plays into it all, aiming to be heralded as a camp icon. If you asked Statham what a camp icon was, he would draw you a tent with a slight smile.
Jason Statham in » Carrier»
Flashiness is not his bread and butter, no matter what happened in the days leading up to fame. If you had shown him, say, the music video for Erasure's «Run to the Sun» (1994), in which he spins in silver paint on top of the World Clock on Alexanderplatz in Berlin, or the even more spectacular sight of him heavily oiled , in a leopard print suit. — printed pants jumping all over the terrible promo video of The Shamen Comin' On (1993), he will simply give you one of his images.
Perhaps the most delightful thing about the Beautiful South's cheesy video for «Dream a Little Dream» from the French Kiss (1995) soundtrack is Statham. There are a lot of couples making out in a movie theater showing French Kiss, and Statham appears for a split second watching French Kiss on a date at 1:21.
Because of his patented stoicism, it only took the slightest change for Statham to get into «funny» mode in Spy. (He's just as funny in, say, Fast & Furious 8.) Everyone reacted to this turn as an act of gleeful self-parody, but of all his other performances, there were probably passages with the same degree of winking and arrogance — hardly any even the slightest difference between the “serious” Statham and the parody one.
Of course, Crank (2006), his most brazen exploitative venture and wild cult success, allowed him to lash out furiously with his tongue. But he has the perfect instinct not to overdo it, even when it happens in his films. It's actually a shame that he's ruled out playing James Bond for now: «Nobody's coming to me for the job,» he told reporters at the Los Angeles premiere of The Meg. His coolness is much funnier and his behavior less aggressively brash than Daniel Craig ever had.
Statham spent several of his formative years working as a pitcher, selling fake watches on London street corners, just like his father did. Interviewers like the connection between that calling and what he does now: selling the right product to the right consumer, even if it fell out of the back of a van, and getting paid handsomely for his troubles.
When Guy Ritchie first noticed him, he was modeling for French Connection. It was a happy day for the director more than for Statham. For his debut in Castle Reserve (1998), he received just £5,000, but for Snatch (2000), he received £15,000. But he was clearly the shrewd and charismatic center of the films for which producers flocked to him.
Two years later, Luc Besson became one of them, and he landed the leading role — in an elegant, laconic, «knows exactly what» does» «Carrier», which has since become a model for him. Fast driving, loud kills, proper stunts and not too much dialogue.
In fact, Statham has bold views on stunt work, and has said in the past that he thinks there should be an Oscar category for it to applaud some of the hardest working guys in the business. He also criticized the over-reliance on CGI in the Marvel Universe, making us question whether he actually completed all four Expendables films.
Where possible, he, like Tom Cruise, likes to do everything himself: he actually hangs from a helicopter 2,000 feet above Los Angeles at the end of Crank. And he's the one who, ahem, attacks Kim Basinger's neck with a belt in Cellular (2004) without warning her first because she said she wasn't scared enough. A warning to all of us.
Perhaps it was the relative lack of quality control that gave Statham's career such longevity. He has no illusions about the inconsistent entertainment value of his films. While he's too much of a gentleman to neglect individual scenarios, he has his favorites and knows where the baseline is.
He is loyal to Richie regarding their first two, knows that Krank is a jerk, and is quite partial to «The Bank Heist». (In my opinion, The Mechanic, 2011's Blitz, Hummingbird and Home Front have some grit to match their pulp, and Death Race, while completely ridiculous, is one of Paul W's better knock-offs. S. Anderson.)
Never. Let's also assume that he's just making ends meet by paying off his mortgage. Thanks to many smart investments and profits, his net worth is now well over $90 million.
He hasn't launched his own line of men's fragrances, as Den of Geek once reported on April 1, but he did get engaged to Rosie Huntington-Whiteley in 2016. What do they do in their spare time amidst their entire entrepreneurial life? “We get drunk and swim around the pool,” he told Esquire. They are engaged, have two children, but are not yet married.
There is almost no thought about Statham that isn't Statham at 200 proof. «If the movie shoots in February, you're going to have a lot of problems.» , he states, mindful of seasonal bloat. “I fucking love cars” is a good one. “Unfortunately, writing is not a skill that I have,” he said, also in a typically self-deprecating manner.
But we’ll see. He can dive from high places, kickbox, do anything that can be called jiu-jitsu, be low-key sexy, drive at insanely dangerous speeds, act well, play football well, dance in his pants like an absolute champ until you don't. tell anyone about it and sincerely jump on school buses from jetskis if you insist. It's quite a portfolio. And no one, especially him, has ever gotten tired of it.
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