Homefront

HOMEFRONT (Gary Fleder, 2013)

Two years after the bloody end of an undercover operation with a meth-cooking and distributing biker gang in HOMEFRONT, Phil Broker (Jason Statham) chooses the simple life in a small town. The widower Broker is now content to bide his time fixing up his house in Rayville, Louisiana and caring for his almost ten-year-old daughter Maddy (Izabela Vidovic). If he’s taught her anything, it’s how to protect herself, as she proves to a bully on the playground. The incident sparks a confrontation with the boy’s parents, Cassie (Kate Bosworth) and Jimmy Klum (Marcus Hester). Cassie provokes Jimmy into fighting Broker, who has no trouble beating him down. He considers the matter settled but is told that in this part of the country people hold on to grudges and perpetuate feuds.

Cassie has no intention of letting the situation go, so she asks her brother Gator Bodine (James Franco) to intervene. While snooping around Broker’s property Gator slashes a tire and steals a stuffed animal and pet cat before stumbling onto something Broker’s files. Learning that Broker is a former DEA agent is valuable for a guy running a meth operation out of his boat and trailer repair shop. More importantly, he discovers that Broker was involved in the case that saw Shreveport kingpin Danny T. (Chuck Zito) sent to prison and his son killed by law enforcement. With the help of his girlfriend Sheryl (Winona Ryder), Gator plans to share his knowledge of Broker’s whereabouts to the bikers so he can improve his business in the area.

Although HOMEFRONT follows a standard action thriller recipe, it cooks up like a gumbo made from basic cable dramas. Even if it’s not derivative of any one show in particular, it contains elements of BREAKING BAD, JUSTIFIED, and SONS OF ANARCHY. While the TV series have time to develop multiple storylines and well-populated worlds of characters, HOMEFRONT has to introduce and wrap up everything in the equivalent of two episodes’ time. Certainly it’s possible to tell this kind of story in a hundred minutes, but Sylvester Stallone, who adapted the screenplay from Chuck Logan’s novel, tosses in several plot points without making any of them stick. Broker’s possible romance with a school psychologist (Rachelle Lefevre) is among the inconsequential side stories delaying the big showdown.

If Stallone were younger, it’s easy to imagine him starring in HOMEFRONT himself. Nothing here seems tailored to Statham’s strengths as an action star. As just another ruthless and efficient killing machine he doesn’t get much of an opportunity to display his fighting skills. There’s little character work to do either, as Broker is a generically sketched hero with little backstory or motivation. He’s concerned for his daughter’s well-being and seems to think his colleagues used excessive force in the Shreveport incident, but otherwise little time or detail is provided to explore what makes him tick.

Franco’s presence as the primary villain offers hope that he might spice up an ordinary action picture. On the plus side, Gator conducts himself in a smarter manner than the usual antagonists in this sort of film. He has the potential to be like JUSTIFIED’s Boyd Crowder, a redneck with a devastating capacity for manipulation, but unfortunately Gator functions more as a middle man in HOMEFRONT’s conflict. If the role weren’t so bland, a bad guy with a gator tattooed the length of his right forearm could have made a perfect addition to Franco’s seemingly career-long performance art act. So it goes for the homogenized familiarity of HOMEFRONT.

Grade: C

The Expendables 2

THE EXPENDABLES 2 (Simon West, 2012)

When the stars of yesteryear lose their luster, it’s common for them to keep working and try to remain relevant by parodying themselves, sometimes to the point of debasement. The faded action heroes in THE EXPENDABLES 2 aren’t making mockeries of themselves for the general public’s amusement, but they’re toeing that line when Chuck Norris turns up essentially to play along with his own meme.

The group of mercenaries led by Sylvester Stallone’s Barney Ross are persuaded once again by CIA operative Mr. Church (Bruce Willis) to do a job for him and to include Maggie (Yu Nan), one of his own personnel, on their crew.  This time the Expendables, including Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), Gunnar Jensen (Dolph Lundgren), and newcomer Billy the Kid (Liam Hemsworth), are dispatched on a recovery mission in Albania’s Gazak Mountains.  

They retrieve the desired item but are forced to hand it over when Jean Vilaine (Jean-Claude Van Damme) and his men intercept them.  Vilaine gives them reason enough to want to hunt him down before Maggie reveals that they’ve given him a map to the hidden location of five tons of plutonium.

The makers of THE EXPENDABLES 2 can claim to have given audiences what they want.  You want action stars, you got ‘em.  In addition to the primary cast of Stallone, Statham, Lundgren, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, and young blood Hemsworth, also on hand to get their hands dirty are Willis, Norris, Van Damme, Jet Li, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Scott Adkins.  Looking for numerous action scenes?  Here you go.

At issue, though, is that most of the biggest names are present for what amount to glorified cameos.  Schwarzenegger and Willis get to do more than they did in the first film, but they’re hardly reliving their glory days in the genre.  Director Simon West doesn’t skimp on shootouts, which would be all well and good if they weren’t spatially incoherent and nonsensically cut.  A brief sequence of Jet Li battering baddies with pans is more pleasing to follow than all of the time in which shots are held for about as long as heavy artillery can fire off a few rounds.

THE EXPENDABLES 2 isn’t a parody, yet it doesn’t help its cause naming the villain Vilaine.  The oldies on the soundtrack are reminiscent of what scores erectile dysfunction pill ads.  One-liners like “rest in pieces” and “I now pronounce you man and knife” are artlessly added and overused.  The movies that many of these guys made in the 1980s and ‘90s were hardly bulletproof, but this is a cynical exercise in settling for what is expected to be passable. THE EXPENDABLES 2 doesn’t give the impression that anyone is making a serious effort, not when they can coast on nostalgia.

Grade: C-

The Expendables

THE EXPENDABLES (Sylvester Stallone, 2010)

THE EXPENDABLES combines two generations of action stars for an exponential increase in cinematic firepower. Among those joining director, co-writer, and star Sylvester Stallone are Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews, and Mickey Rourke. Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger appear in cameos to set the plot in motion.

THE EXPENDABLES draws its name from the Stallone-led band of mercenaries ready to be hired by employers with deep pockets. Their latest job takes them to a South American island where the Expendables are supposed to overthrow a dictator. As might be expected, the situation on the ground doesn’t exactly conform to how it was represented to them.

THE EXPENDABLES has one foot in ‘80s action films and the other in older tough guy movies like THE DIRTY DOZEN. Computer-generated effects take a back seat to the sheer brawn of the stars and the size of the explosions. As technology has granted filmmakers the ability to make almost anything on screen believable, it’s refreshing to see a return to the basics of action movies, in which physical presence and practical effects rule the day. If only THE EXPENDABLES were a better film.

The surplus of beefy heroes and villains leaves little room for turning these types into characters worth cheering or jeering. The hodgepodge plot, dominated by standard-issue mission details, is at once straightforward and yet jumbled to the point where it’s not entirely clear what’s going on. Most importantly, the fight scenes, while plentiful, aren’t memorable in the least.

The elite guns-for-hire premise doesn’t do much on its own in a year that has also produced the aptly named THE LOSERS and the erratic but overall entertaining THE A-TEAM. Despite it’s top shelf roster of action’s biggest from yesterday and today, The Expendables are more like The Unremarkables.

Grade: D+

The Bank Job

THE BANK JOB (Roger Donaldson, 2008)

The 1971 robbery of Lloyds Bank on Baker Street in London is considered to be one of the biggest heists in England's history, yet no money was recovered nor any arrests made. Perhaps even more stunning is that this tantalizing story was reported in the media for just a few days because of a government request not to publish or broadcast information about the matter. THE BANK JOB, a fictionalized account of the event, purports to reveal untold truths about what happened.

Struggling car dealer Terry Leather (Jason Statham) has been known to be involved with unsavory characters and enterprises, but he is strictly a small-time crook. He admits as much when longtime acquaintance Martine Love (Saffron Burrows) presents him with a tempting opportunity to make a quick killing. She claims inside knowledge of a bank whose security system will be out of commission temporarily, leaving a vault full of safe deposit boxes vulnerable to thieving hands.

The prospects sound too promising to turn down, so Terry assembles a team of amateur criminals to assist with pulling off the robbery. They acquire a shop two doors down from the bank and go about the arduous tunneling so they can break into the vault from below.

This is not an ordinary heist, though. Black militant Michael X (Peter De Jersey) is storing scandalous photographs of a Royal Family member in this particular bank. He uses the threat of the pictures going public as a means of keeping the authorities at bay. MI5 is determined to get the photos. Using Martine's legal troubles as leverage, the government agency concocts the plan for her to carry out. Ideally MI5 gets the compromising pictures, Martine escapes prosecution on drug charges, and Terry and his oblivious crew go away with a fortune.

Undoubtedly director Roger Donaldson and screenwriters Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais have taken liberties with the facts for dramatic purposes. THE BANK JOB doesn't get its juice from being based on real events, though. The truthful element is simply a sweet bonus. Densely plotted and briskly paced, the film weaves a fascinating story of cops and robbers and sex scandals and police corruption.

The fun really begins after the heist has concluded. Storylines converge so that Terry and his buddies are put in a seemingly unwinnable position. Turning over the pictures to MI5 gets them free and clear with the government, but doing so puts them at risk with the underground porn king who had a ledger documenting his police bribes stolen from his safe deposit box. He also has ties with Michael X and a vested interest in holding onto his damaging photographic evidence. The crooked policemen aren't keen about being found out either, yet stiffing the intelligence agency is obviously a losing proposition.

Watching Terry finagle out of the jam is as satisfying as any of the break-in's particulars. Cool and collected as ever, Statham plays an outlaw capable of capturing the public's favor.

Executed with machine-like precision, THE BANK JOB is a ripping good caper with plenty of interesting twists. Ultimately, how much of it is true is secondary to its entertaining nature.

Grade: B