Written and directed by Boaz Yakin (who easily has one of the oddest filmographies around, jumping from inner-city dramas like Fresh to inspirational sports movies like Remember the Titans), Safe casts the British strongman as Luke Wright, an MMA fighter who runs afoul of New York's Russian mafia after winning a bout he was supposed to throw -- an ill-advised action that results in the murder of his wife. Rather than kill him as well, the mob decides to let him go on living, with the stipulation that anyone he befriends will die at their hands. One year later, Luke is a homeless drifter who shuns any and all human contact. Elsewhere in the Big Apple, a young Chinese girl named Mei (Catherine Chan) has been forcibly recruited into the Triads, who want to use her photographic memory as a vault in which to store precious codes that would lead their enemies to their ill-gotten fortune. This information naturally makes Mei valuable to all sorts of criminal-minded types and it isn't long before the Russian mob makes its move to acquire her. But she manages to escape her captors and is wandering alone along a subway platform when he catches the eye of Luke -- who, at that very moment, is about to leap in front of a train to end his torment once and for all. Rather than go through with that plan, he decides to follow Mei and winds up becoming her bodyguard, fending off the Russians, the Triads and a crew of dirty New York City cops.

After the protracted set-up is out of the way, Safe gets down to the business of butt-kicking with a close-quarters subway battle that functions as Luke's audition for the "job" as Mei's protector. It's a good sequence, one that's enhanced by Yakin's decision not to cut around the action too much, letting us see the flurry of kicks and punches in wide shots instead of a jumbled flurry of inserts. It also sets the stage for the ridiculousness that is to follow because if you think it's unlikely that a martial arts battle could break out on a Brooklyn-to-Manhattan bound subway train without some helpful citizen pulling the emergency brake, just wait until you see what else the director has up its sleeve. Having established a fairly straightforward action movie premise, Yakin proceeds to re-write his plot on the fly, randomly introducing all-new character backstories (in addition to being an MMA fighter, it turns out that Luke was also once a cop and some kind of government-trained special ops agent) and changing the identity of the big bad boss that's ultimately calling the shots.

The chaotic storytelling would be obnoxious if the film didn't noticeably have its tongue planted firmly in its cheek. One almost gets the sense that Safe is Yakin's version of a Hot Fuzz-like spoof of action movies. Granted, it isn't anywhere near as clever as that Wright/Pegg/Frost classic (it also doesn't scale the same insane heights as Crank 2: High Voltage, another Statham-starring action movie-cum-live action-Looney Tunes cartoon), but like Fuzz, it embraces rather than runs from its escalating absurdity. (The blatant nod to a famous moment from Raiders of the Lost Ark in the final showdown between Luke and the man that emerges as the ultimate bad guy -- don't worry, we won't give his identity away -- is particularly amusing.) If Statham himself is in on the gag, he doesn't tip his hand, playing every scene with his usual growly intensity. It's that serious-minded sense of purpose, combined with his lithe physicality and rugged good looks, which has made Statham a favorite among action movie fans and a leading successor to the previous generation of stone-faced heroes like Stallone and Dudikoff. Like a lot of kid sidekicks, Chan is little more than a prop for much of the movie's running time, but at least she's less of a cringe-inducing caricature than, say, Short Round. (Temple of Doom has its fans and they're welcome to it, but that character, coupled with Kate Capshaw's shrill damsel-in-distress, makes it a chore for us to re-watch -- the great mine car chase and rope bridge battle aside.) Usually, the pairing of an action star and a child is intended to bring out the hero's sensitive side, so it's nice to see that, despite having a young girl in tow, Statham's primary mission remains kicking ass and taking names.

Click here to read Jason Statham talk about Safe and The Expendables 2

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