Jason Statham does not rest on his action hero status while physically staying back in his territory as is evident in this gritty character driven cop film. Having burst into the international arena courtesy of action films like The Transporter, Crank and The Expendables, it is no wonder that Statham is the United Kingdom’s greatest export actors, a working-class Bruce Willis, even having the hairline recession to match. He throws mouth-watering muscular action and self-destructive lines with a knowing look on his face. To his fans he is simply known as The Stath.
However, while The Stath has no MVP type seasons in an NBA contractual league, his active performer parts which define him as a demi-god filmmaker enable him to do nothing else of note. These are roles such as those portrayed by him that do not require him to cry for a long time and are essentially physically demanding.
Which, as anyone who’s seen the highly under-rated British crime caper The Bank Job will testify, is actually a huge shame. The Stath when given the opportunity to act comes contrary to popular assumption into the picture in more meaty, dramatic roles and it is reasonable to assume that blitz will mark a turning point for the Stath.
It is not to say that the character of copper Tom Brant, whose toughness can be uncompromising, is out of reach of this very Sydenham boy, but this rough-and-tough, politically incorrect police officer is a far cry from what we usually get to watch from Statham. He spends more of his screen time getting draped in a yellow fog of smoke and booze than he does trying to play the part of beating the bad guys. Quite the opposite actually, for such a film, which has his name written above its title, it is pretty light on action. He still gets the one-liners though, including an entertaining one about the late Gary Coleman.
Like Mel Gibson’s Roggs in Lethal Weapon, Brant is a phone cop who looks like he is on the verge of losing it. He is first shown wielding a hurling stick and punishing a group of hooligans trying to step into his car again – (Have they not seen the transporter?). One dozen imprinting Later – courtesy of local red-top journo Dunphy Dotcom, one more dose of bad publicity and he’s off to the station’s googles in a insane effort to bring him back from the brink of self induced monsterdom. But – as always in these kinds of films – he’s picked a bad week to ‘pop’, there is a looser of a cop killer roaming the streets.
To say the least, it is quite easy to tell who the perpetrator is, as we see Barry Weiss (Aidan Gillen) silencing his first victim in a gruesome scene, so here it is not a mystery for unreasonable people why they are interested in cops; it is a mystery for how they can uncover a vendetta against them which is too personal and determines who is behind it and what are their schemes to this. There is no head of the investigating team because Brant’s boss and mentor Chief Inspector Roberts is in mourning over the loss of his wife And so DC porter nash who has been played by paddy considine answers the call to lead south london’s police constabulary to assist with the investigation of the senseless murder of the police officer on duty within their district.
While there might have been an expectation of PC Porter Nash’s appointment amongst the liberal brigade, an openly gay bobby’s configurative adoption remains a volatile proposition (to the knuckle-headed coppers who make up the force anyway), and with Brant overlooked for the promotion, tensions are high in the station. Unfortunately Brant Nash and Brant are left with no other option but to join hands in the hunt for a killer who has taken it upon himself to humiliate the police force by killing innocents in the guise of a serial killer called Blitz.
When it comes to the local TV picture, this is definitely not the usual crime drama movie; still, courtesy of the battle between the most explosive British acting, Blitz is far superior to the majority of TV films available with not only Statham doing the hard yards. In as primary characters, it is less flashy for Porter Nash but Perkins manages to earn the ‘Midlands De Niro’ tag with a choreography of moving feelings in the performance, David Morrisey comes across as a basic yet vegas tabloid filled with News morons and scribes as the characterized writer. Gillen remains the show’s biggest attraction, particularly as twisted rough fella in the ‘The Wire’ series.
It is not uncommon for Aidan Gillen to huff and puff in his shirtless scenes as serial killer Weiss vocalise his inner demon sporadically and Gillen makes this character rather disgusting depicting him as one of the most despicable villains in particular the sagas of I saw wickedness.
The Joker’s character may be the most loved, but watching its portrayal in Nolan’s film gives one an impression of an idiot and only an idiot as there are no motives given to this character. E.g. ‘A council estate nutter who can’t even twitch becomes a criminal genius in a matter of hours!’ What About Brant and Nash, as the body count rises spectacularly a police officer is being taken down with increasing frequency.
As the police get picked off like little dolls, Agent Brant and Agent Nash do their mystery solving and end up getting to know each other in a very touching way. Luckily, they were assisted by a surprisingly effective snitch who has porky snitch betrayal, it is only a matter of time before the policetime-hating killer factors, who is acquainted with Stahams edgy metal calculates, comes in. Nothing however seem vaguely sinister when the new couples first introduced car scene appears to climax with foot tapping.
There is nothing new in this, the action plays out in a snowcapped London from sappy grandmotherly romance novelswhere dogs act obscure, it has to be the funeral for a stuck up youngest son as rain pours down in plenty, drug peddlers, if they are even in the story at all, as passive produits de la culture of the everyday local market, rapist prostitutes littering no less than every alternate house, you can’t tell a turned rat from a bum and the old time lawmen are buffalos. Except those feminist nagging though, it is quite entertaining, not in the typical sweat generating Statham type, but in the more of character driven aspect – “Do I look like I carry a pencil?” is one of the less remarkable scans. According to Ken Bruen’s fiction, Karen Prisnz plans of catastrophic brutality, Blitz suffers attempting to reconcile all thread sub-plots, and which actually has to be the dramatic down curve for Brant’s co-worker and friend WPC Falls (Zawe Ashton of St. Trinian’s II), simply becomes an annoyance of the central storyline. Still at least, all the elements seem to make up what is commonly known as a good plot, but with Brant and Nash being simply charming making the film more like a remix version of buddy cop movies that if we are lucky, might be just the beginning of a new collective.
Blitz falls under the seventh Brant’s Ken Bruen novel, out of seven, and given the addition of Jason Statham as the vulnerable bobby, further sequels will hopefully try to make the most of a good but imperfect beginning of a movie franchise that the UK will be happy to have.
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