Inventory: 7 times Jason Statham has played a totally normal working man
A lot more professions require punching than you might think.
Photo: (clockwise from top left) Amazon MGM Studios, Warner Bros. Pictures, Freestyle Releasing, 20th Century Fox
Despite having a background as a professional model and swimmer, Jason Statham immediately strikes you as a working-class bloke. That’s clearly what director Guy Ritchie saw when he cast Statham in his first roles in the crime comedies Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. With his gravelly voice and permanent five o’clock shadow, Statham always seems like he’s just gotten off a long shift and is on his way to the pub for a pint before going home. He captures the mix of stoic reserve one has when doing a job with the universal weariness that arrives with completing the work.
Despite this unique bearing, most of his movies work to shuffle him off into two roles: thief, or an enforcement agent/special operative of some kind. Either way, he lives off-grid, not contained by society’s rules, so that he can either carry out an important mission or execute an incredible heist. Statham is not a guy who does a nine-to-five and then comes home to a wife and kids (if he does, that family will be in danger). His characters are defined not so much by their relationships, but by the work he has to accomplish. However, outside films where he plays a robber or some kind of cop (such as a Mars Cop in Ghosts Of Mars or a multiverse cop in The One), there are also the Jason Statham characters who nominally have real jobs. These characters could ostensibly put their profession on tax forms, and it probably wouldn’t raise an eyebrow in the same way “hitman” or “secret agent” would.
To celebrate Jason Statham once again playing a working man in the appropriately titled A Working Man, here are seven other times when Statham played a guy who technically had a somewhat normal job.
Transporter, The Transporter Trilogy
In The Transporter movies, Statham plays Frank Martin, who is basically a posh delivery man. Frank has three rules: never change the deal, no names, and never open the package. When Frank breaks one of his own rules (and look, he’s self-employed, so these are really more guidelines than anything one would need to take up with HR), it puts him and a young woman (Shu Qi) in the crosshairs of a human trafficker and his thugs. All three of Statham’s Transporter movies follow the beats of Martin agreeing to deliver something only to find himself embroiled in so much intrigue that sometimes he has to get lubed up in motor oil before a fight. This is the level of commitment one should demand from all delivery drivers.
Farmer, In The Name Of The King: A Dungeon Siege Tale
A rare opportunity for Statham to step into the fantasy genre, Uwe Boll’s Lord Of The Rings knock-off features the actor as Farmer, and appropriately, he is a farmer. (Weirdly, for such a cheapy genre picture, it is historically accurate that in the Middle Ages, people’s names would derive from their profession). Farmer spends the first 10 minutes of the movie farming with his son, which also includes whipping a boomerang at crows (perhaps some kind of human-like prop could scare away the crows, but until then: boomerang). However, when the forces of evil storm his village, kill his boy, and kidnap his wife, Farmer has to return to being a warrior, which means chucking a boomerang at off-brand orcs. He eventually discovers he’s the bastard son of the king (Burt Reynolds) and the true heir to the throne, which may mean that he’ll have to change his name to King.