The Facts:
Synopsis: A former DEA agent moves his family to a quiet town, where he soon tangles with a local meth druglord.
Stars: Jason Statham, James Franco, Winona Ryder, Kate Bosworth, Frank Gillo, Izabela Vidovic
Director: Gary Fleder
Rated: R
Running Length: 100 minutes
Trailer Review: Here
TMMM Score: (6/10)
Review: What possessed the filmmakers to put star Jason Statham in such a hilariously awful wig for the ten minute prologue of Homefront is a mystery akin to the whereabouts of the remains of Jimmy Hoffa.
If you can make it past the truly awful first moments of Homefront (and trust me, it’s reach for the remote bad), you’ll find that a better movie emerges after the opening credits have run.
Sylvester Stallone (The Expendables 2) had long wanted to bring DEA Agent Phil Broker to life on screen and had held the rights to Chuck Logan’s novel Homefront for years. After renewing his option to the material several times, Stallone wisely realized that he was too long in the tooth and heavy on the filler to play the middle aged agent and adapted the screenplay into a star vehicle for friend Statham (who also turned in another good 2013 performance in the undervalued Parker).
Statham has never been called on to use much in the way of actual acting chops before, favoring karate chops instead so this was a nice departure for the action star. Though the screenplay maybe takes the actor too far into sentimental territory, it’s bursting with Stallone’s “integrity above all else” morals that he’s so in favor of putting into his screenplays.
After a small potatoes incident on a school playground puts Statham’s single father at odds with the hick-ish parents of a bully, he gets into even more trouble when the bully’s uncle (a small time drug kingpin played by James Franco, This Is the End) is called in to teach Statham and family a lesson. When Statham strikes back, it sets into motion events that will put his idyllic life in jeopardy as Franco and his girlfriend (an ageless Winona Ryder, Frankenweenie) make a play for the big time by turning Statham over to some bad guys out to settle an old score.
Though the film has about five climaxes (all more than decent sequences, I should say), there’s no escaping the fact that there’s more loose ends in the film that there are complete sentences. Characters (like a pretty schoolteacher that Statham and his daughter take a shine to) appear and disappear, never to be heard from again and there’s an element of convenience in every twist the film introduces. Even so, the film works almost in spite of itself.
Let’s be clear: there’s absolutely nothing new in the film as directed by Gary Fleder (Kiss the Girls) or in Stallone’s script. Whatever opinion you’ve formed about the movie from the preview is exactly the kind of movie you’re going to get…and that may not be a bad thing if you know what you’re getting into. You may actually feel better about the film waiting to watch it on Netflix or picking it up from Redbox. Miss it in the theater but consider giving it a look when it’s easier to fast forward through the prologue.