Bill O’Byrne’s Bargain Bin Blues: Homefront

Homefront | $$$

• Directed by Gary Fleder.
• Written by Sylvester Stallone.
• Starring Jason Statham, James Franco, Winona Ryder.

PHIL vs BILL
Jason Statham plays an ex-narcotics agent who’s forced into hiding when the bikie gang he infiltrated targets him for death in this routine, Sylvester Stallone-scripted thriller. Newly widowed with a young daughter, he re-settles under another identity in a small town where a feud with a local family leads to methamphetamine dealer James Franco exposing his secret. The violence and sentimentality are equally gratuitous, and the stock characters tick all the boxes, but Homefront looks terrific, boasts an unexpected turn-against-type by Kate Bosworth and has a great punchline that’s all-but lost in the alternate ending included among the handful of unremarkable extras. — Phil Wakefield.

Vengeance, thy name is Statham.

One of the best things about Homefront is seeing Jason Statham with a full head of biker drug-gang hair. That alone is worth the price of admission for Jase fans.

But it all goes quickly – about as quick as his undercover fed bust of a meth lab goes bad when local cops get all trigger happy and he retires to a small Louisiana town to go incognito.

Alas for his cover, but fortunately for the plot, his young daughter decks the school bully and they make an enemy in the form of Kate Bosworth’s Cassie, who is the protective, and eight-times-scarier-than-Satan mother of the bully. No really, she is terrifying.

And when her husband gets his arse kicked by Jason, she calls on her brother (James Franco), who goes by the idiotic name of Gator Bodine, to put the frighteners on Statham.

There’s argy bargy, character development, a building up of tension and some sentimental crap designed to delay the gunplay by about 20 minutes. This involves Statham going horse-riding with his daughter while they talk about their feelings since Jason’s wife died the year before and the kid still misses her.

Seeing as the screenplay was done by Sylvester Stallone, the delicate application of this emotion is done with a trowel the size of New Jersey.

Luckily things do ramp up in a bit of a hurry and there is much kicking of butt and shooting of bodies, so all is well in the Statham universe.

It is a surprisingly nuanced action flick in that the characters are given time to develop. Well, except for James Franco who is pretty much James Franco with a stupid character name. He did “menace” OK, but wasn’t as scary as his sister.

Winona Ryder makes an appearance as Gator’s girlfriend. I don’t know if it was intentional, in kind of a weird Stallone comment about stereotypical Southern filial relationships, or I just wasn’t paying attention but she looks a bit like his sister.

In the 30 seconds between her seeing Gator, and them causing a bit of panel damage on the side of a car, I was thinking it had all taken a very dark Dixie Gothic turn. Luckily it was just a case of acute film comprehension failure brought on by popcorn and, less likely, a cheap Aussie shiraz.

My only complaint was that the inevitable action-packed climax was a bit simple. The set up had been with this group of reasonably complex people and you weren’t sure just how much good, or bad, lurked within them. Instead, director Gary Fleder seems to have thought, bugger it, that’s enough of the subtlety. Unleash the Statham!!!

And thus it happens.

Good performances from Izabela Vidovic as the daughter, Omar Benson Miller as seemingly the only black guy in a small Louisiana town, which seems unlikely, and always good to see Clancy Brown, this time as the is-he-dodgy-or-is-he-not sheriff. (You may know him as The Kurgan from the original Highlander, but it is as Sgt Zim from the epic, and sadly misunderstood, Starship Troopers that his name is spoken in hushed tones allowed only for some.

Sgt Zim: “The enemy can not push a button … if you disable his hand.

“Medic!!”

Not much in the way of extras. A couple of deleted scenes and an alternate, and better, ending. (The kid goes to a small town school that has its own resident hotty who is the school psychologist – Rachelle Lefevre. This again seems somewhat unlikely but the alternative ending ties things up with her a bit better.)

The way is open for a sequel with a potentially good drug gang showdown. And now the My Mom Died Of Cancer crap is out of the way, they can have at least another 20 minutes of the Stathamisation of bad guys to look forward to.

“Medic!!”

• Value for money: $$$
• Artistic merit: 4 out of 7.
• Statham kicking arse: Yes!