Not one, but two Jason Statham movies are blowing up on streaming this week, and the films couldn’t be any more different from each other.
According to the latest rankings from FlixPatrol, 2015’s Wild Card is currently the twenty-fourth most viewed pic on Netflix the world over as of this Saturday, April 3rd. Meanwhile, 2011 animated family flick Gnomeo & Juliet is the eleventh most popular movie on Disney Plus.
From Con Air director Simon West, Wild Card is a remake of the 1986 Burt Reynolds effort Heat, generally following the same plot. Statham stars as Nick Wild, a recovering gambling addict with lethal skills who hires himself out as a “chaperone” – AKA a bodyguard – based in Las Vegas. But he may have gotten in over his head when he takes on the mob single-handedly to avenge his friend, who was brutally raped by a vicious gangster.
Wild Card also features a great supporting cast around Statham, including Anne Heche, Sofia Vergara, Milo Ventimiglia and Stanley Tucci, in a memorable cameo as a mafia boss called Baby. The film was a passion project for the Crank star, who worked on it for five years before it eventually came out, initially developing it with Mission: Impossible director Brian De Palma before he was replaced with West. Unfortunately, it ended up being a box office bomb and received mostly negative reviews, but like a lot of Statham’s less successful productions, it’s finding new life on streaming.
As for Gnomeo & Juliet, that’s about as unlikely a movie as you can get for the actor. The British star made his voice acting debut – and, to date, only appearance in an animated film – in this gnome-themed adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. Alongside a stacked cast led by James McAvoy and Emily Blunt, Statham features as Juliet’s evil cousin, Tybalt.
You can catch both these titles on streaming now ahead of Jason Statham‘s next project, Guy Ritchie’s Wrath of Man, which drops next month.
