New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

Shalimar Sahota: I quite like Statham myself, though he does appear to be playing the same character in almost every action movie. Some of them at least offer something a little unique or crazy in the story department, be it Crank, or The Transporter trilogy. The Mechanic however just looked like your average action/revenge flick, a mild step up from a standard straight-to-DVD movie. CBS Films might not be too pleased, but to score over $10 million with this I'd say is good enough. Statham is branching out a little, lending his voice talent in the animated Gnomeo & Juliet, but then he is voicing an action-gnome.

Edwin Davies: Until I read that CBS Films was behind this, I thought that it wasn't a particularly good result, but considering that their releases to date have consisted of two films that failed to make back their budget (Extraordinary Measures and Faster) and one that did (The Back-Up Plan) they've got to be pleased that it has already earned back what they paid for the distribution costs. It's a win for them. A very, very modest win, but a much needed one for such a young company. I'm sure they were hoping for more, given that Statham is coming off of the success of The Expendables and has a fairly solid, reliable fan base to draw on, but I'm sure that it'll do reasonably well overseas and okay on home media, which is where Statham shines.

Michael Lynderey: It's a tough question. If CBS Films was aiming for consistency here, then The Mechanic certainly played as well as most of Statham's recent films (and a bit better than the masterful Crank: High Voltage). If there was hope that Statham would now be a bigger star, especially with Ben Foster in tow and the Expendables in the foreground, well, it doesn't look like that happened. But if Statham and the studio are happy with these openings, I think he'll be able to move forward with more of the above. It's just like what Chuck Norris and Charles Bronson were doing with the eerily similar Cannon studio in the 1980s.

David Mumpower: The Charles Bronson comparison is an excellent point. With regards to Matthew's question about him doing something other than a genre flick, I consider The Bank Job to be a much different type of project for him yet it wound up performing in that same range as everything else he does. I am one of those people who likes Jason Statham and I always will because I watched him in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. I remain surprised each and every time a member of that smallish British ensemble cast again proves himself as a legitimate action hero. He shouldn't have a career and I admire his persistence in exceeding expectations, even if he is ridiculously typecast.

Continued:       1       2       3