Safe

Saw Safe (thanks, Basil!) It was an alright action movie. I don't usually like action movies (so consider 'alright' high praise) and kind of resisted this one. It suffered from a lot of the usual action-tropes, particularly the trope of the world being ruled by an elaborate crimocracy, where lone-wolf super-hero cops/marines/seals are the only real agents of justice. The plot follows a five-year-old girl with a photographic memory who the triads kidnap to use as a sort of human PDA. I thought the triad heads were a bit too evil (why force the girl to watch executions? It just seems unnecessary.) but this is the world the film takes place in. Okay.

Jason Statham, the British Bruce Willis, plays an out-of-work boxer whose life is destroyed by all-powerful Russian mobsters. He takes an interest in the welfare of the girl just as a three-way mob fight breaks out over the information in her head. There are shades of Leon the Professional in a few scenes (though the film thankfully steers clear of any creepy innuendo) and shades of Die Hard in others. Statham makes a sympathetic but competent hero and the girl is cute-as-a-button as little girls in movies always are.

The plot hums along steadily, twisting and turning at all the right times. I was always kept in an amused state of confusion (but then I kind of go out of my way to avoid second-guessing films.) The motivations of Statham's character are interestingly left kind of buried, only really spelled out in an aside near the end. The fight scenes are satisfying without being ludicrous. They were more heist-movie-ish in that they were plot points as much as they were spectacles.

It was interesting how much the film referenced the time in which it was made. Often action films are kind of timeless. The exact politics of the situation is secondary to the sweet-ass gun fights. In this one there is an element of globalism in the multicultural gangs (there are Americans, Russians, and Chinese gangsters. All the super-powers have a mob!) Terrorism is referenced often and the disillusionment of Americans against the anti-terrorist measures taken for our safety is also given voice by our protagonist. Don't get me wrong, the film is not particularly political and could be set in London without much re-writing (it is in fact one of those films emphatically set in New York (one character even shouts "this is New York!")) but it gave me something to contemplate when the gun fights got protracted.