The Rock is too big, Sly Stallone is too old and Steven Seagal looks too much like a sea lion. When you need a man who can chop off a gunman’s hand and use it to shoot someone else in the face, there’s only one person who fits the bill

Now that’s tough … Jason Statham in Crank 2: High Voltage. Photograph: Allstar/Lionsgate/Sportsphoto LtdJason Statham

In Homefront, Jason Statham is a tough, uncompromising DEA agent. In Crank, Jason Statham is a tough, uncompromising hit man. In Hummingbird, Jason Statham is a tough, uncompromising homeless man. In In the Name of the King, Jason Statham is a tough, uncompromising farmer.

Jason Statham is nothing if not consistent. Consistent and tough and uncompromising. But that consistency has won him legions of fans – almost 50 million on Facebook alone. You know what you’re getting with a Jason Statham film. He will beat people up. He will crash cars. He will do an unconvincing American accent. And most of these attributes are put to good use – with an extra layer of irony – in the forthcoming Paul Feig comedy Spy.

It’s a magic formula that taps into the success of Schwarzenegger, Stallone and Van Damme in the 1980s. After that golden era of butch men, we were left without a genuine action hero for too long. A whole generation grew up without a dominant figure kicking in people’s heads and breaking legs and crushing skulls.

Statham has filled that void, and then some. It has helped that he is so prolific. Since 2002 he has appeared in 32 films, most as the leading man. The Transporter. The Expendables. The Mechanic. Blitz, Death Race, Chaos. War, Parker, Safe. He has snarled, he has punched, he has been involved in very many explosions.

But Statham has also been aided by the fact that that the competition are either ageing or incompetent. Arnold Schwarzenegger has the puffed-out chest, high-waisted chinos and general demeanour of a semi-successful cigar salesman. Sylvester Stallone, with his reddish-orange, knotted-muscle torso, has acquired the appearance of a bodybuilding grandma. Steven Seagal looks more and more like a sea lion.

Then there’s the current crop of rivals. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is probably Statham’s main competitor for the hardman role. But Johnson is too big, too muscular, too much like a bodybuilder. He can waggle his pecs. And he is a very big man. But could he beat up two people while tied to a chair? Would he chop off a gunman’s hand, then use that hand – still holding the gun – to shoot another man in the face?

There’s Mark Wahlberg, hopping around like a snappy little Yorkshire terrier. Vin Diesel: your friendly neighbourhood car mechanic. Kiefer Sutherland, the kind of guy who’d come up to you in a bar and tell you he saw aliens last night. Daniel Craig is too clean-shaven. Harrison Ford is 90. Chuck Norris has lost the plot.

That’s not to say Statham is only a success because of his lack of competition. While he essentially plays the same character, he has shown an ability to really get under the skin of that character. Take Hummingbird, for example. He’s homeless and has long hair in that. In real life he is neither homeless nor does he have hair.

In Crank, famously, he is injected with a poison that will kill him if his adrenaline level drops, leading him to snort cocaine, get in a lot of fights and have sex with his girlfriend in front of a crowd of cheering tourists. To my knowledge, he has never been injected with such a poison.

Statham cannot do accents. He can’t really do facial expressions. His real life – professional diver turned model turned music video dancer turned black market salesman turned actor – has been far more varied than his film career.

But he can do fighting, and stunts, and more fighting. When a director needs an actor to punch someone in the throat, to snap an arm, to deliver a headbutt, Jason Statham is the man they turn to. He is our modern-day action hero. Cometh the hour, cometh the tough, uncompromising man.

Source: theguardian.com