By Jennifer Fiduccia
The new movie Homefront stars Jason Statham (Phil Broker), James Franco (Gator Bodine), Winona Ryder (Sheryl Gott), Kate Bosworth (Cassie Bodine), Chuck Zito (Danny T), Omar Benson Miller (Tito), Izabela Vidovic (Maddy Broker).
Written by Sylvestor Stallone. The film opens with a major drug bust going down, and inside undercover DEA agent Phil Broker (Statham) gives chase to the head of the drug ring and his son. While trying to arrest the father and son team, the son is shot to death, and his father promises to kill Broker and his children.
The rest of the movie takes place a few years later in a small town in Louisiana, where a now widowed Broker and his pre-teen daughter have moved to rebuild their life. An entire series of events is set off by Broker’s daughter standing up for herself against the school bully. The bully’s mother Cassie, demands an apology and doesn’t get one enough to her liking. She escalates the situation by going to her brother, Gator, who is the town’s resident “drug kingpin”.
After Gator discovers that Broker is actually an ex-undercover DEA agent, he tries to use that information as leverage to gain business ground for his drug running enterprise, and that’s where the rest of the movie plays out.
There are a lot of action and shooting scenes, which is what one would expect from a Statham movie, but it is still pretty predictable. Once Gator brings in the “big dogs” from the city, things quickly escalate and spin out of his control. The remainder of the movie is one gun fight after another, interspersed with chase scenes, swearing, explosions and hand to hand fighting. If you’re a fan of Statham, then there are really no surprises here. If you know to expect the movie’s complete predictability and his somewhat stiff acting, you’ll enjoy it.
3 out of 5 stars
Second Review by Ami-jo Shriner
Jason Statham plays a DEA agent who helps to put a Louisiana drug lord in prison. The problem: the drug lord’s son is killed during the bust. His wife dies and he moves his daughter to northern Louisiana to get away from the bad guys.
New in town, people are distrustful of the standoffish nature he puts forward. Which seems to suit him just fine, until his daughter gets into an altercation on the playground; this introduces him to the local drug family and the sister of the local drug runner. Kate Bosworth is excellent as a drug addict mother and wife. She is delightfully nasty to her husband and totally enabling of her son and his bad behavior.
Her brother, James Franco, is her brother and seems to be clear headed through the majority of the movie. He is also just mean about how he goes about his business and when he learns who Statham really is he brings about mayhem in the form of the drug gang from the beginning of the movie. Unfortunately he gets more than he asked for, because they not only get extremely violent, they cut him out of his deal altogether. Like criminals tend to do.
Homefront is the story of a dad trying to live a quiet life with his daughter, he just happens to know how to defend his property. I never expect a whole lot in the way of story or acting when I go to a Jason Statham movie, and I really figured it would be dismal when I saw the screenplay was by Sylvester Stallone. I don’t know if it was the opening credits putting it up front and center who the screenplay was written by or that the script is based on a novel, but Homefront wasn’t disappointing in any way.
This movie has all the ass kicking you would expect with a fairly solid story to back it up. Add to that, no over the top explosions (they all make sense to the story) and a solid cast, and you have a decent movie. Any Jason Statham fan should see this, any James Franco fan should see this (it’s a little bit of a departure for him), and the cast is rounded out by solid performances from Bosworth, Winona Ryder, and Omar Benson Miller. There are some great lines that will have you laughing, which is also not something I really expect from this type of movie.
All in all Homefront is a good, solid action movie.
3/5
