Ranking ever Jason Statham movie is a confrontation with Hollywood’s king of the off-season, a brand-name star whose thrillers and action pictures have been turning up as programmers whenever studios (especially but not limited to Lionsgate) need to plug something in between the year’s tentpoles. This includes many January releases, of course, like 2024’s The Beekeeper, which has shaped up to be a sizable hit and came close to topping the box office in its third weekend; it also means he’s made plenty of movies haunting the underpopulated release dates of late August, early September and mid-April, while occasionally stepping in to pinch-hit on big-ticket summer-season blowouts.
In other words, Jason Statham is there when we need him. Within his niche, he’s crafted an immediately recognizable screen persona, complete with a sleek bullet-headed look and a melodiously English and gravelly murmur. But cinema, as much as we love it, is not as reliable as Statham himself; some of his projects land with greater punch than others, no matter how much they may look alike. So in the interest of helping out any Statham fans who may be interested in investigating his ample catalog, here are all of Jason Statham’s live-action movies, ranked from worst to best. Along the way, you’ll find lots of heists, lots of fights, and a bunch of Expendables. But there’s only one Jason Statham.
35. Revolver (2005)
How perfect that Guy Ritchie, the man who brought Jason Statham to the masses via Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, would also have a heavy hand in his worst movie? Less perfect than that symmetry: This languidly paced and abstractly conceived Kabbalah tract is the worst movie of Ritchie’s career. Madonna has influenced a lot of subpar recording artists, but by making a movie about his wife’s religious fixation, Ritchie might have them all beat. Statham was along for the dispiriting ride.
34. Turn It Up (2000)
If Revolver is about as bad a movie as you could make with Jason Statham in the lead, the music/crime drama Turn It Up is about as bad a movie as you could expect to make with Jason Statham in a more limited capacity. This means it might actually be worse than Revolver, but for purposes of this list it has the tiniest sliver of novelty, in that Statham never before or since has dipped into movies about a character’s desire to make a truly fire rap album. (Sadly, he plays a drug dealer whose money funds its creation, rather than a record producer with ties to the then-fading Britpop movement, as I’d hoped.) Turn It Up also makes history as the simultaneous beginning and end of a leading-man career for Fugees member Pras, astonishingly inert and diffident opposite a hostile Ja Rule – who would have at least one lucky break on the big screen when he appeared in the first Fast and Furious movie in 2001, a series Statham would later join as an all-star. Connections!
33. 13 (2010)
A nigh-unwatchably dull yet also deeply unpleasant thriller about rich people betting on what is essentially a massive Russian Roulette tournament, 13 asks: “What if we were Hostel but we don’t feel like thinking of new tortures?” The best thing about it is the cast of weirdos it assembles: Michael Shannon, Mickey Rourke, 50 Cent, Alexander Skarsgård, Sam Riley, Ben Gazzara, Gaby Hoffman, Ray Winstone and, best of all, Jason Statham wearing a hat. The fact that multiple cast members turn up in Expendables movies only makes you wish there somehow was one of those featuring Statham, Winstone, Shannon and, why not, Gaby Hoffman too.
32. Chaos (2005)
One of the weirdest things about Statham’s career is that it arguably reaches its zenith and nadir simultaneously: In the mid-2000s, Statham was making some of his best pure action movies while occasionally starring in absolute dreck like this listless, drab cop thriller. (2005 was particularly terrible in this regard, with some of his worst-ever movies alongside the wonderful Transporter 2.) In Chaos, he catches Wesley Snipes and Ryan Phillipe on their downslope, and doesn’t spark bro-bonding chemistry with either of them, not least because Snipes appears to have shot most of his scenes over the span of a couple days, largely isolated from the other actors. Oh, and supposedly this all has to do with chaos theory.
31. London (2005)
You don’t often think of filmmakers, especially those who dabble in Jason Statham movies, as failed playwrights, but that’s exactly how London comes across: As the work of someone adapting their fondest Off-Broadway dreams to the silver screen. As a piece of writing, it’s pretty terrible – macho preening disguised as sensitive macho preening – but it does give Statham some superficially chewy dialogue (and a wonderfully unconvincing rug of fake hair) opposite chief preener Chris Evans, his co-star from another, much better movie on this list. London is slightly more worthwhile than other films from the bottom of the Statham barrel mostly for the weirdly stacked cast: Not just Stath and Evans, but Jessica Biel, Isla Fisher, a blink-and-miss Paula Patton, Kat Dennings, an ill-advised “let him riff” cameo from Dane Cook and a small role for Cook’s disgraced nemesis Louis C.K. It’s also a bit novel to see Statham playing someone who is genuinely insecure (and, we learn, literally impotent!) rather than a beacon of no-fuss masculinity. Novel enough to sit through 90 minutes of drug-fueled fuck-this-and-fuck-that philosophizing, though? Not even close, mate.
30. Blitz (2011)
This is a somewhat more stylish cop thriller than Chaos, but here’s the thing: Statham actually makes kind of a weird on-screen cop. “Likably thuggish” is great for a crime thriller where the criminal in question should be rough-hewn enough to feel believable but compelling enough to follow through the story; in a cop movie, it winds up feeling aggrandizing and bullying unless you’re diving a bit deeper into monster-cop psychology. Blitz in particular is one of those movies where the attempts to liven up the story with additional points of view only reinforces how bog-standard Statham’s character is and also somehow makes a 97-minute movie feel a full 35 minutes longer than it is.
29. In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (2008)
This might have looked, from a distance, like a step up for the star of The Transporter and Crank: The leading role in a $60 million fantasy movie costarring Ray Liotta, Leelee Sobieski, Ron Perlman, John Rhys-Davies, Matthew Lillard, Claire Forlani and Burt Reynolds. (Have you caught on yet that many of Statham’s worst movies feature a long, eclectic cast list?) Those may not all sound like big names (and they’re not, especially given that this movie came out in the U.S. in 2008, not 1998), but it’s fascinating to watch this shlock and realize just how many famous faces are populating each scene – and how badly each and every scene is directed. Uwe Boll, folks; he really doesn’t know what he’s doing, with editing choices and presumably low-intervention work with his cast that make for an almost surreal level of amateurishness. On the other hand, Statham does fight his way through some orc-like soldiers in this, which puts it above his absolute worst. Just by running and jumping, he’s putting in a better-faith effort than almost anyone else here.
28. Hummingbird (2013)
A noble experiment in a Statham meta-movie has our man playing a hard case eventually seeking vengeance for a friend’s murder – so basically, a Jason Statham character, only in a more realistic, pared-down, borderline minimalist context courtesy of writer-director Steven Knight. It’s an interesting idea that doesn’t quite come together.
27. The Megs (The Meg [2018]; Meg 2: The Trench [2023])
Statham entered the realm of bigger-budget franchises as part of an ensemble in the Expendables and Fast & Furious pictures; meanwhile, his solo vehicles have him sharing the screen with a bigger, (marginally) weirder creature than either Sylvester Stallone or Vin Diesel: A giant prehistoric megalodon. Though the second film approaches a kind of gee-whiz sci-fi-adventure corniness that (perhaps counterintuitively) takes better advantage of its star than the defanged monster mash of the first, neither Meg movie is particularly exciting compared to smaller-scale creature features like Crawl or The Shallows. If anyone wanted to mount an argument that Statham peaked closer to 2005 than 2015, these would probably be major exhibits.
26. Mean Machine (2001)
Mean Machine is full of great ideas. First, the idea of remaking The Longest Yard but replacing American football with English footie is a much sounder idea than “make Adam Sandler QB.” More specific to Statham’s place in the British film industry, this 2001 movie exists at the crossroads between the late ’90s comedies about scrappy, quirky underdogs banding together to improve their hardscrabble circumstances (The Fully Monty, Brassed Off!, etc.) and the wisecracking post-Lock Stock crime comedies where the scrappy, quirky underdogs might throw some punches, too (Guy Ritchie and Matthew Vaughn both produced this one). On top of that, Mean Machine offers a glimpse into an alternate world that looked a lot more plausible back at the turn of the century, where ex-footballer Vinnie Jones, not Jason Statham, became the breakout star of Guy Ritchie films to get his own vehicles. As much as the presence of Jones thrilled me in a variety of films contemporaneous with this one when I was 20 or so, in retrospect, he’s best in smaller doses. That more modest dosage here gets reserved for Statham, playing a fearsome prisoner who is eventually recruited for a prisoners-versus-guards game coached by Jones, playing an incarcerated pro athlete like Burt Reynolds before him and Sandler afterward. He’s a delight (and a third Guy Ritchie player, Jason Flemyng, turns up too), but Mean Machine feels considerably more downtrodden than either of the subgenres it’s hybridizing, making for oddly glum (if still brisk and sometimes amusing) entertainment.
25. War (2007)
Jet Li and Jason Statham have appeared together in four films; this is the only one where they truly properly square off, and also, somewhat inexplicably, the worst of the lot. Rather than making an oops-all-fights Statham vehicle closer in line with the best Li movies, the movie doubles down on the rote cop shit that both of them have to endure in their lesser American films. What a waste!
24. Ghosts of Mars (2001)
In retrospect, it was appropriate that John Carpenter was around for the unofficial transition between Dimension Films (Miramax’s genre arm) and Screen Gems (Sony’s similarly functioning label), because he’s such a major influence on both – which is to say, on both the movies of Robert Rodriguez and Paul W.S. Anderson. Either filmmaker could have made something like the early Screen Gems entry Ghosts of Mars, and it’s sad to say that, at this particular point, either of them would have probably given it a better shot than Carpenter, whose space western has some fun mayhem and smart subtext but not a whole hell of a lot of oomph. Still, Statham is well-placed here. Even when given the not particularly charming running gag of hitting on Natasha Henstridge, he gives it a perfectly Stathesque spin. After she rebuffs him and he tries again, he blithely explains: “I’ve changed a few minds in my time.” The accent does a lot of the work there, but work it does.
23. Wild Card (2015)
Based on a novel previously adapted into an ill-received 1986 Burt Reynolds vehicle, there’s at least some cross-cultural novelty in Jason Statham prowling around the sleazy corners of Las Vegas as a gambling addict who does odd jobs to support himself. Director Simon West returns to the sight of his Con Air crash-landing, and brings some imitation-Bay flash with him. Perhaps more importantly, Statham plays a man called Nick Wild.
22. Homefront (2013)
Phil Broker may be an All-American Ford-driving straight-talker outfitted in flannel and a ballcap, but he still speaks with Statham’s British accent, revealing the limits of simply placing the most enduring new action hero of the 2000s into well-worn bruiser narratives. Sylvester Stallone certainly knows from those, and crafted one for his Expendable pal here, writing a characteristically clunky screenplay giving Statham, as an ex-DEA guy just trying to settle down and protect his daughter, excuses to kick ass when backed into a corner. The ass-kicking has a little more atmosphere and a little less bravado than usual, despite Phil Broker being pitted against a drawling meth-dealer named Gator. If Gator’s punchability required further telegraphing, he’s played by James Franco – and yet even the satisfaction of meting out well-deserved Franco punishment doesn’t buoy Homefront above the low second tier.
21. Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019)
Hobbs & Shaw has its moments, of both cartoonishly macho one-upmanship and cartoonishly hyperbolic big-action goofiness. It even has a few moments of smaller-scale, head-cracking satisfaction. And sleek, charismatic, cat-eyed Vanessa Kirby is in it! So why in the hell does this team-up between Statham and Dwayne Johnson, reprising their antagonistic Fast & Furious characters, linger in the memory as a colossal disappointment? It’s the star power – not of Johnson or Statham (though both are mostly coasting here), but their famous buddies like Kevin Hart and Ryan Reynolds, who both make gear-grindingly tedious “comic relief” appearances to slow the momentum of a vehicle that should be faster and more pared-down than the parent franchise that started to bloat right around the time Hobbs & Shaw got the green light.
20. The Expendables quadrilogy (The Expendables [2010], The Expendables 2 [2012], The Expendables 3 [2014], The Expend4bles [2023])
Individually, the Expendables movies aren’t very good, and together, they’re… still not very good. But you have to hand it to them for their dunderheaded persistence to blowing shit up and knocking heads with the exact same level of competence as a mid-to-lower-tier entry in the muscled-up men-of-action genre they’re emulating, and not a smidge more. Sometimes, as with the dopey but Statham-centric fourth entry, they’re made with considerably less – and that’s exactly when it becomes clear how much Statham is forced to bring to these dumb-ass parties.
19. Safe (2012)
Another in a line of Statham’s East-meets-Eastender semi-martial-arts movies, Safe has our man protecting, and bonding with, a young child. Writer-director Boaz Yakin, whose portrait of the urban-childhood experience encompasses both Fresh and Uptown Girls, acquits himself well enough in the action sequences.
18. Killer Elite (2011)
Jason Statham had busy years before 2011, but that year kicked off a period of unmatched productivity. His main franchises were done, The Expendables raised his profile while not necessarily commanding much of his time, and he was therefore able to star in eight movies over the course of three years – but few, if any, of his best films appeared during this 2011-2013 period. If anything, a movie like Killer Elite felt like a downgrade for Statham’s co-stars, who happened to be fellow stoic Brit Clive Owen and the decided non-expendable elder statesman Robert De Niro. Though De Niro did his best to disabuse anyone of the notion that a Statham vehicle was beneath him by (a.) releasing a whopping 14 movies during this same three-year span and (b.) literally saying “I gotta cover my expenses” during Killer Elite, at the time this movie was understandably received as a disappointment, which makes sense. A Jason Statham/Clive Owen face-off probably should be a little cooler than this – or at least give De Niro something a bit more colorfully pulpy to do. But as a meat-and-potatoes mercenaries-doing-the-killing thriller, it gets by, and served as an early signal that, like his characters, Statham often works best alone.
17. Parker (2013)
Parker, the criminal-with-a-code character from a ton of Donald Westlake novels, has an unusual on-screen history, appearing in essence but not by name in a number of Westlake adaptations, because Westlake insisted that the Parker name only be used if a full series of films were planned, rather than a one-off. Westlake’s death, and a subsequent, less stringent deal with his estate meant that Jason Statham got to do what Lee Marvin, Jim Brown, Robert Duvall and Mel Gibson, among many others, never could: Play Parker in an official Parker movie called, just for good measure, Parker. And the result is… fine! It feels a bit like a potential alternate franchise for Statham that could have transitioned him more directly into Dad Cinema following the more manic, Lionsgate-y series that established him, but it also loses a bit of essential Statham-ness by giving him such an iconic character (and he wound up doing bigger-ticket movies for his second act instead). The movie winds up notable for an unusually high-powered love interest, with Jennifer Lopez enlivening the movie as its second lead.
16. The Italian Job (2003)
If you watched F. Gary Gray’s superficially similar heist picture Lift on Netflix recently, you may have wound up feeling nostalgia for Gray’s two-decade-old foray into the genre, which also represented Statham’s biggest foray into the mainstream to that date (and, in fact, would remain his biggest hit until The Expendables came along). The Italian Job, a remake of a 1969 picture starring Michael Caine, certainly outclasses the likes of Lift by doing little things like making basic sense, and assigning its broad supporting characters actual personality traits; it’s not an especially terrific heist movie, and in fact often borders on dopey, but it gets the job done. It nicks a bit of that Guy Ritchie energy by having Statham play “Handsome Rob,” the wheelman in a gang that also includes Mark Wahlberg, Seth Green, Charlize Theron and Mos Def. Naturally, Handsome Rob is the best-seasoned of the bunch; the cast is mostly fun, but he’s the only who feels like he might have been pinched for thievery (this despite Wahlberg being an actual criminal in his youth). So it’s only right that he steals the movie, innit?
15. The Mechanics (The Mechanic [2011] and Mechanic: Resurrection [2016])
Not counting cameo appearances, Jason Statham has appeared in 12 sequels so far, with at least a few more likely on the way. You don’t get to this kind of number by sticking to a couple of established franchises. No, you have to be willing to opt into sequels even when no one particularly wants or expects them, as was the case with his workmanlike redo of The Mechanic, a Charles Bronson thriller from 1972. As it happens, Mechanic: Resurrection is more fun than its predecessor; it’s lower of budget but higher-caliber of cast, with Tommy Lee Jones, Michelle Yeoh and Jessica Alba all clocking in as Stath continues his outrageously complicated hit jobs (by coercion, of course). These movies are trash, but at least they know how to throw Statham around the frame – and occasionally take advantage of his Olympic-diving background.
14. The Cameos (Collateral [2004], The Pink Panther [2006], Fast & Furious 6 [2013], F9 [2021])
Statham has so long stayed in his particular lane that seeing him unexpectedly in other contexts carries some extra zing, whether it’s announcing his introduction and/or return to the bigger universe of the Fast series, unexpectedly starring alongside Kevin Kline and Beyoncé for a single scene of the Pink Panther remake (where he can only play a Frenchman by acting wordlessly) or, best of all, rolling into Michael Mann’s Collateral for a single scene where he plays, in my head-canon, Frank Martin from the Transporter series.
13. The One (2001)
For the most part, Statham has absorbed noticeable action-movie trends into his meat-and-potatoes style, which has seemed increasingly throwback-y as the years have gone by. But in The One, he collides head-on with the turn of the century and two of its signature genre moves: The not-entirely-successful Americanization of Asian action stars, fused with the frenzy of post-1999 Matrix knockoffs. It’s Stath’s first movie with Jet Li, who really takes center stage (with a touch of ’90s Van Damme) in a dual role: A multiverse-hopping villain who thinks he will attain godlike powers if he kills all 124 of his identical equivalents, and the good-hearted last variant standing who must stop him as both men grow stronger. Statham, vaguely suppressing his British accent, plays a multiverse enforcer alongside Delroy Lindo. Not yet known as a martial arts guy in 2001, Statham is strictly a supporting player here, as the gimmicky main event is a Li-versus-Li showdown. But this sci-fi actioner from the X-Files duo of Glen Morgan and James Wong is the right kind of chintzy, the kind of movie that’s premised on wormholes, ‘verse-hopping and superpowers, but stages action sequences in a hospital hallway and a factory catwalk.
12. Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels (1998)
Here’s a hot take that might also be racist against white English dudes: Guy Ritchie’s crime pictures got better once it became easier to tell his characters apart (of course, then they got immediately much worse with Revolver). Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels is plenty of fun, but his follow-up is where the laddish charms, flashy stylizations and playfully knotty storytelling really come together.
11. The Beekeeper (2024)
The real test of action-hero longevity is in a performer’s ability to semi-inexplicably score a later-career hit mostly by the virtue of accumulated affection. Technically, The Beekeeper scored somewhat better reviews than the average Jason Statham vehicle by virtue of being a little more bonkers, with its riffs on QAnon-adjacent conspiracy-mongering and some fashionably John Wickian mythology. But that doesn’t really explain why it’s on track to become his highest-grossing movie as a solo action star, not really. If anything, Statham is moving a little slower here, with action that favors quantity over quality and lacks the pure dexterity of his best past moments. Yet his work as a secret-ops guy reactivated by morally righteous vengeance has a kind of boiled-down essence that reminds audiences of what they like about him in the first place – a sincere commitment to the absurdity at hand. That’s what makes the John Wick comparisons even more apt: Like Keanu Reeves, he’s quietly capitalizing on years of goodwill. In other words, it’s not a conspiracy or a secret; Statham’s rock-solid presence has been hiding in plain sight.
10. Death Race (2008)
Statham has worked with so few name directors – even fewer if they aren’t named “Guy Ritchie” – that his Death Race remake with Paul W.S. Anderson almost counts as an auteur play. Oft-overlooked among Anderson’s films, made while he temporarily handed the Resident Evil reins to other directors, it’s an enjoyably nasty piece of work (if ultimately kinda toothless, satirically speaking) and Statham is a great fit for Anderson’s action-figure aesthetic.
9. Wrath of Man (2021)
After many years apart, Statham and Guy Ritchie reteamed for this less comedic crime thriller, a grim hybrid of heist picture and revenge saga, featuring some of the most cleanly muscular directing of Ritchie’s career. There’s a shiver of dread when the movie recalls Revolver in its stoic portent and ham-fisted Biblical allusions, but mostly it’s just hard-boiled pulp that could have worked just as well in the late 1940s (though the joshing-guys language wouldn’t be quite so harsh).
8. Cellular (2004)
Now this is the Statham/Chris Evans team-up we deserve, with Evans embracing his phase-one persona as kind of a callow tool, conscripted into a ticking-clock thriller by an errant phone call from a kidnapped woman (Kim Basinger). Statham plays the kidnappers’ ringleader, and it’s a great peek into Statham’s alternate career as a character actor in 1940s-style noirs and thrillers. You can’t blame him for not having that career any more than you can blame him for not being born in 1915, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the hell out of Cellular, arguably the best movie from the late and frequently resourceful David R. Ellis.
7. The Fast Movies (Furious 7 [2015], The Fate of the Furious [2017], Fast X [2023])
For overall spectacle, Furious 7 rates as one of Jason Statham’s best movies, and certainly one of his best pure action movies. But he’s a mere brick in a wall that also includes Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, Michelle Rodriguez, Tony Jaa and one of those carved-dedication bricks for departed star Paul Walker. Maybe that’s because the Fast series doesn’t really know what to do with most of their villains until they turn them to the good side. Accordingly, Statham has more to do when he joins the family in Fate of the Furious, a weaker movie overall that nonetheless features a #DadGoals scene where Statham goes all Hard Boiled while babysitting/saving Dominic Torretto’s infant son. Fast X is really just a check-in, and so while these three movies would be all over the bigger map of Statham’s best-to-worst, averaged out they land here.
6. Spy (2015)
Every action hero must take a self-parodying part in a big studio comedy at some point, with the possible exception of Steven Seagal, who prefers to handle all of his self-parody more personally. But Statham’s turn outclasses the likes of The Pacifier, The Tooth Fairy or Playing with Fire, to name some lackluster Kindergarten Cop knockoffs from his Fast & Furious co-stars. Instead, Statham opts for an R-rated version; rather than babysitting, he squares off with Melissa McCarthy, as the arrogant and quite possibly insane superspy to her meeker, more levelheaded handler-turned-field-agent. It turns out that Statham’s clipped, gravelly delivery is perfect for mouthing absurd, improv-heavy nonsense and angrily demanding access to what he calls a “Face/Off machine.” It’s not only Statham’s show – McCarthy and Rose Byrne are both hilarious here too – and that makes his comic punches land even harder.
5. The Bank Job (2008)
Five years after co-starring in an actual remake of a British heist movie from the late 1960s, Statham stars in a proper British heist picture, inspired by a true story and set in a period only a couple of years removed from the original Italian Job. It’s less of a self-consciously lightweight lark than his previous Job, and as such, this lads-on-a-mission picture has remained a career highlight. Statham teams with Saffron Burrows to steal compromising photos of Princess Margaret at the behest of the British government, and the result is rock-solid Roger Donaldson-directed entertainment. The Bank Job modestly but convincingly makes the case that Statham need not depend solely on more rough-and-tumble projects – a vibes revival, as it were, from his early Guy Ritchie days, even though the tone of this one isn’t quite so cheeky. Another Transporter is probably too much to hope for, but could Statham do another Job and complete his unofficial trilogy?!
4. Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (2023)
Speaking of Statham pulling heists that are more slick deception than flying fists, speaking of Guy Ritchie, speaking of movies that are just plain fun: In 2023, Statham and Ritchie released one of their best pictures together, and Operation Fortune bombed like nobody’s business. Too bad; Statham and Aubrey Plaza are a two-great-tastes situation that, for better or worse, no one but Ritchie seems likely to put together. They’re both having a blast here as freelance secret agents on an Ocean’s-y mission, as is Josh Hartnett as a doofus actor roped into the scheming and Hugh Grant as their villainous mark. Unlike Ritchie’s similarly jaunty but bigger-budget The Man from U.N.C.L.E., no one has fancifully raised the possibility of a sequel – and given how many inferior Statham vehicles have spawned them, that’s a damn shame.
3. The Crank Duology (Crank [2006]; Crank: High Voltage [2009])
As I’ve mentioned here, Jason Statham can exude a certain timelessness due to a combination of his work in time-tested genres and his general consistency. The Crank movies go in the opposite direction from meathead classicism (though that meatheaded remains): They’re aggressively digital-forward, in-your-face, camera-movement-is-the-action movies driven by pure high-concept sensation, with Statham’s Chev Chelios forced by magical poisoning to keep his adrenaline pumping (and later, in the sequel High Voltage, the electricity juicing) in order to stay alive long enough to find an antidote and/or exact revenge. Perhaps the only movies that have flirted with turning edgelording into works of art, the Crank films also make especially interesting use of their star, who tends to work within a seemingly impenetrable shell. The desperation that fate injects into the life of Chev Chelios turns Statham into the aggressor, rather than attempting to cast him as the stoic man just minding his business, and the movies are shockingly straightforward in presenting action-movie mayhem as a grotesque carnival game, rather than setting up the elaborate system of justification that fuels so many entries in this genre.
2. Snatch (2000)
Moment for moment, this might be the best movie Stath has appeared in, give or take his minute in Collateral. But his status as an ensemble member where Brad Pitt and Dennis Farina, among others, are stealing scenes like they’re sought-after diamonds, ever-so-slightly diminishes its ranking here. When I think about this movie, I immediately picture Pitt entering the boxing ring to the strains of the Oasis instrumental “Fuckin’ in the Bushes.” But the second thing I picture is Statham asking “Sausage Charlie” for the status of his sausages (“five minutes, Turkish”), which also runs through my head approximately half the time I cook anything. It’s also refreshing, after so many years of watching Statham as a man of action, to return to the roots of his appeal, with less emphasis on his physicality and more focus on his ability to play a dryly beleaguered bloke trudging his way through crime-centric farce.
1. The Transporter Trilogy (The Transporter [2002], Transporter 2 [2005], Transporter 3 [2008])
Remember that bit in the original trailer for The Transporter where Jason Statham rings a doorbell and then kicks the door down into one dude’s face and then whups everyone with his coat and a gun? Despite this perfect piece of marketing, The Transporter seemed like a low-rent novelty at the time of its 2002 release. I’ve repeatedly joked-not-really that it provided Statham’s chance to play a B-movie version of James Bond: Cool car, sleek outfits, taciturn manner, huge badass, but with some martial arts touches and a layer of EuropaCorp cheese over the whole thing. Yet with the passage of time, and two additional sequels that may be not quite as good or may be every bit the original’s equal (who’s to say?), the Transporter trilogy looks more and more like Statham’s peak as a movie star and man of action. The man is Frank Martin, an ex-soldier who has retired to a life of well-paid transportation – delivering sketchy goods, acting as a getaway driver, and so on, with a strict three-rule code (“never change the deal, no names, never open the package”). Naturally, these rules are almost never followed throughout three films, as Frank saves a kidnapped woman, saves a kidnapped boy, and protects another kidnapped woman. (The so-called “package” turning out to be a person is a twist the series never tires of deploying.) Breaking supposed rules while following a rigid formula is classic action-movie stuff, and fight choreographer Corey Yuen does his best to make each film in the Transporter trilogy into classic action movies, following Statham in motion above all other concerns. Whether he’s slicking himself up with oil to fight off a bunch of guys with axes or racing to stay in close proximity to his car lest a bomb on his wrist explode, this is Statham in his element: Fists, cars, most scenes either played in a nice suit or shirtless, and a foe-turned-friend French inspector. No matter how many franchises he headlines, this is how he should be remembered: Forever kicking down that door.
Jesse Hassenger is associate movies editor at Paste. He also writes about movies and other pop-culture stuff for a bunch of outlets including Polygon, Inside Hook, Vulture, and SportsAlcohol.com, where he also has a podcast. Following @rockmarooned on Twitter is a great way to find out about what he’s watching or listening to, and which terrifying flavor of Mountain Dew he has most recently consumed.