One thing has become very clear over the last few months, and that’s the fact that Netflix subscribers love themselves some Jason Statham. There are few forms of cinematic entertainment better suited to a late night or lazy weekend than watching cinema’s premiere purveyor of chrome-domed martial arts do what he does best, and he’s been a reliable one-man subgenre for almost two decades now.
Since the beginning of January alone, the actor’s Homefront managed to reach the number one spot on the most-watched list, while Parker accomplished the same feat last month and ended up as one of the platform’s biggest hits throughout the entirety of March. Meanwhile, his collaboration with Dwayne Johnson in Fast & Furious spinoff Hobbs & Shaw also posted a strong showing.
The latest entry from the Statham back catalogue to find itself creeping up the viewership chart is 2012’s Safe, which is hovering around the global Top 20 now. It ticks all of the required boxes in that it’s got a one-word title and sees the leading man star as a former member of law enforcement, who gets drawn into the path of the Russian mafia and finds himself tearing a hole through the entire organization fuelled by nothing but vengeance.
It’s a formulaic setup that the actor’s fans will be more than familiar with at this point, but Safe is definitely one of Jason Statham‘s better outings. Tightly plotted and sharply directed by the standards of the genre, it offers nothing in the way of surprises and is entirely predictable from the first minute to the last, but it allows the action icon to showcase his signature set of skills in a series of fistfights, shootouts and brutal brawls.