"I'm going to kill you… with this spoon." Although it won't be his highest-grossing movie, this flawed but ambitious (and rather peculiar) London-set thriller finds Jason Statham once again broadening his dramatic palette while retaining his trademark homoerotic action base. He plays special-forces soldier turned street-bum "Crazy Joey" who stumbles into a swanky Soho flat that becomes a base from which to rebuild his life, avenge a murder, and play games with his (sexual) identity.
After the lascivious oil-wrestling and male striptease of the Transporter series, the Stath here finds himself surrounded by prominently displayed photos of bound penises. "Are you exclusively gay?" asks a neighbour, to which our hero replies: "Recently I've found myself attracted to nuns" – his relationship with Agata Buzek's Sister of Mercy being one of the film's many oddly upturned generic tropes.
Although the narrative entanglements are overstretched (no surprise from writer/director Steven Knight who penned Eastern Promises), cinematographer Chris Menges rises above the usual seedy Soho visual cliches to conjure some haunting twilight images. One day, an academic will write a paper entitled Jason Statham's Body; Polymorphous Perversity and the Male Gaze in 21st-Century Screen Stardom. Until then, let's just get on with enjoying a singular British icon.
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