Homefront is a perfectly serviceable Jason Statham vehicle. It’s not as good as Safe, or even Transporter 3 to keep things in context, and Redemption had more on the dramatic front, but Statham still fights real good. It’s interesting that Sylvester Stallone wrote the screenplay. This is only the second time he’s ever written anything for someone else. I like what Stallone is going for, though it is way more complicated than it needs to be.
Jason Statham IS Phil Broker, a DEA agent who led an undercover operation that got a meth dealer’s son killed. He moves to a small town where the school bullies start trouble with his daughter Maddie (Izabella Vidovic), and the bully’s mom Cassie (Kate Bosworth) makes trouble when Maddie defends herself. Cassie’s brother Gator Bodine (James Franco) is the local meth cooker so he gets involved just to get Cassie off his back, but when he finds out who Broker was, Bodine plans to sell him out to the meth cooker from the prologue.
I really like where Stallone’s screenplay is going with this. Violence begets more violence and if you beat up a bully, they’re just going to feel more insecure and come back with more bravado. Broker really tries to be a good example for Maddie and smooth things over. His apology to Cassie’s husband is not exactly magnanimous, but it seems like the small town squabbles would have worked themselves out if Bodine hadn’t gotten involved.
Though it is not as hyper as others, Homefront is unfortunately shot in the handheld style popularized by filmmakers who seem to think it makes things look real. It feels like less of an artistic statement here than just how things are done now. With minimal shaking, director Gary Fleder is able to show us what is happening in an action scene, but it’s the quick cutting that robs the sequences of their thrills. It would have been really nice to see that motorcycle crash into the car. I know that’s what happened, but the editing took us out of the momentum of the crash, which is actually the opposite of what editing is supposed to do.
When Broker fights, it’s clear enough how he’s overpowering his enemies. We see all the Statham moves and he uses the environment well. There are only a few of those scuffles so it’s not a full on Jason Statham fight movie. It’s also smart screenwriting that Bodine hires thugs and bikers to fight Broker for him. That at least makes the fights threatening. Bodine is a dangerous criminal but Franco is no match for Statham in a fight. There is a series of three terrible composite shots after an explosion, where not one of the three foreground characters looks like they are actually in the same scene as the explosion. That’s really the only visual effect, but it’s strikingly incompetent.
The plot is overly complicated for the point Stallone is getting at. He could just tell a story about small town trouble, how violence follows Broker even when he tries to move away. Cassie and Bodine certainly pose enough danger on their own. Bosworth is really good and makes Cassie scary. She’s somebody who’s looking for trouble no matter how much you try to placate her.
The DEA subplot is just generic action movie pap, the kind that Stallone can write in his sleep, but he should save that for The Expendables. This can just be local bullies making trouble, and you can still have all the thugs and bikers come in as hired guns. Bodine’s men really are trying to kill Maddie too. I mean, don’t worry about Maddie, but I do respect that they’re not pussyfooting around this. These are bad guys and they make bad decisions.
I’d like to see Stallone write more, to bring his values to other heroes. He has a deep understanding of everyday issues, let alone celebrating the testosterone. He’s also able to lay in some poignancy, as he did with the Rambo movies for Vietnam veterans, the Rocky movies with politics. Homefront gets bogged down a little too much in generic plot mechanics, but it’s a fine rental.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever and Shelf Space Weekly. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
