Fast Action Hero

“Look at that one there,” says the shaven-headed bruiser, perched over a collection of gold jewellery on an up-turned crate down a Dickensian-damp London back-alley to a growing crowd of shady onlookers. “Handmade in Italy, hand-stolen in Stepney.” The opening scenes of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, the British comic heist caper made by the future Mr Madonna, Guy Ritchie, provided the world’s first glimpse of Jason Statham, a square-jawed Londoner who’d recently made the transition from competitive diving and underwear modelling. Famously, Ritchie cast him as the verbose street trader when he found out his father used to run a similar operation in nightclub toilets in the 1960s.

That was exactly a decade ago, and his lip-curling delivery, always in his unapologetic English accent, has coursed through blockbusting action pictures ever since. It’s a genre he seems uniquely suited to; the unpolished, football hooligan version of Vin Diesel has starred in two Transporter movies, with a third to come in the spring, the endless chase-filled fun of Crank, with its pumped-up sequel Crank 2: High Voltage also due in 2009, and then, out now across the region, is Death Race, a kind of Mad Max for the video-game generation. And during it all, he’s moved to Los Angeles, dated the stunning model Kelly Brook and is even rumoured to be seeing Kate Hudson. Life, as he might say, is sweet.

Sure, he’s not exactly a shoe-in for Academy Awards, but sitting on the set of Crank 2, he clearly couldn’t give a rodent’s backside. “It was six weeks of madness,” he says of the shoot, in which he reprises his role of LA hitman Chev Chelios, who clearly survived the 2,000-metre fall from a helicopter at the end of the first instalment. “[Mark] Neveldine and [Brian] Taylor are the nuttiest directors I’ve ever worked for, and I’d repeatedly work for them time and time again, because they’re just so out there.”

The plot, shot once again like a hyperactive pop video, revolves around a similar theme to its predecessor. A Chinese hitman has replaced his real, indestructible heart with a battery-powered one that requires regular recharging – with electric shocks, of course. If you like endless chases, gun-toting violence, grisly deaths and public sex scenes, then there’s little chance of you not getting your money’s worth when this hits the screens. “It’s so offensive,” Jason beams, clearly offering the word as praise. “Whatever the first one was, this one’s more – just completely rude, offensive and plain mad in every way. There’s no movie like it and they’ve exceeded all expectations. To go and do that – balls to the wall – with no worries about trying to tone anything down, or to try to make it believable, it’s just like a video game. There’s nothing more fun to do than to go and make something like that kind of a film. It’s pretty unique.,”

After the surprise success of Crank, which pulled in $40 million globally on an original investment of $12 million, the producers have thrown an additional $8 million in the pot, some of which went to, slightly incongruously, Spice Girl Geri Halliwell, and more sensibly to veteran oddball actor David Carradine, who creeped out audiences in the 1970s with roles as a robot cowboy in Westworld and as the young fighter in iconic TV series Kung Fu. “He plays Puon Dong,” says Statham. “This really mad Asian Mafia guy, that... well, I don’t want to give too much of the plot away. There’s a couple of other nuggets that I’m not going tell you about, we have to keep those as a surprise. But Chev is running around with a plastic heart; they’re farming him for his organs, because he’s the man that cannot die, so they give him an Aviacore, a totally artificial heart, and he’s trying to find his real one. I’m giving too much away now! Step back... step back!”

Of course, before all that is Transporter 3, which he hadn’t even seen when we ran into him. It’s directed by the improbably-named Olivier Megaton, and follows yet another race-against-the-ticking-time-bomb caper as he has to transport a Ukrainian environmental officer through Europe – without going 75-metres from his car. Scratching his head, though, Jason can’t really talk about the film as he knows as much about the final product as the rest of us. “I’m very excited about, I know that,” he offers. “I know from what we’ve shot, it has potential to be the best of the three. I’m going to see it next Friday for the first time, so I’ll know a bit more then. There’s a new girl [Natalya Rudakova] that Luke literally found on the streets of New York, she’s the new chick. We’ve got Corey Yoen back as the action choreographer, so there’s some great fight sequences, and Frank Martins just doing the same old thing…”

Well, not quite the same old thing. And rather like Daniel Craig’s new brooding, doubt-riddled 007, Frank Martins has, says Jason, also gone through something of a metamorphosis, adding a vulnerable touch to the gun-toting bounty hunter. Not easy. “Well, I think on the third one we found his weakness. And it all lies within the lovely female played by Natalya!”

It’s hardly an overstatement to say that Jason owes his initial career break to a chiselled physique that followed him from diving pool to catwalk. And the third instalment of Transporter required yet more sessions to not only tone it but prepare it for more hammer – including sparring with boxers. “If you’re not physically sort of ready, if you don’t hit the gym and you’re not stretched out, you’re going to get injured very quickly,” he says. But he also admits that ten years of action movies – we’ve not even mentioned the likes of the Italian Job, Mean Machine, Snatch and The Bank Job – have started to take its toll on a body now in it’s 37th year.

“I’m trying to break the mould,” he adds, clearly pondering a change of pace if his career is to flourish into middle age. “If you do too many, the mould will be so thick that you’ll never escape it. That’s not what I want. But at the same time doing films like Crank and Transporter – which are great entertainment with a global appeal – made it possible to do a film like The Bank Job.”

And it didn’t stop him getting back to the cardio, back to the weights and back to the pool for Transporter 3. Not that the competitive diving career didn’t give him much in the way of an advantage for protracted underwater scenes, which included scuba diving. “Absolutely not, no…! I used to do diving years ago, but you have to hold your breath for about two seconds, you dive in and you come straight to the surface. So, I actually had to learn to scuba dive for the first one. One time I was thrust into a cave and the mask was ripped off! But you gain confidence very, very quickly and it was the best place to learn.”

Statham, a native of Derbyshire in the English Midlands, is living The Life. Trading homes in London and Los Angeles, getting paid handsomely to race futuristic cars, beat the crap out of gangsters, travel the world, and spend some quality time on set with the likes of Amy Smart. Away from the cameras, there is a Lenny Kravitz-like CV of sensational girlfriends, from Kelly Brook to rumours – if unsubstantiated – of a relationship with Owen Wilson’s ex Kate Hudson. He laughs at the suggestion, without actually denying it outright, but it seems unlikely to be serious simply because he’d rather be in the UK than the US.

“I’m only [in Hollywood] because it’s a practical thing,” he says, his English accent defiantly unpolluted by Californian vowels or nasal whines. “They keep me busy, a lot of the meetings are out there. So if I want to immerse yourself in that world then Hollywood is where I have to be right now. But it’s great to come home. I love the UK.” So, what does he miss? “Just the company – my friends. Recently, I filmed Death Race and when I finished I realised that I had not had a drink for five months, so I brought out two friends – two great lads that I’ve known for years – and I took them to Las Vegas and we had a great time. I miss my pals.”

But his love of his roots is probably Jason Statham’s appeal, especially in his native England, where success is often regarded with barely concealed scorn and resentment. Like Michael Caine, he’s essentially the same person in every film he makes, a loveable rogue whose knack of picking the right vehicle has enabled him to inhabit any number of cinematic worlds with a certain ease. And besides, once you’ve said the line “Protection from what, Zee Germans?” you’re going to be a cult hero.


One line at a time
Jason’s premium dialogue:

Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
“I asked you to give me a refreshing drink. I wasn't expecting a f**king rainforest! You could fall in love with an orangutan in that!”
Bacon doesn’t appreciate the cocktail served in a Samoan pub

Snatch
“You took the f**king jam outta my doughnut, Tommy. You did.”
Turkish responds to Tommy’s question about, well, who took the jam out of his doughnut

Crank
“Yea, yeah, your gonna rape my grandmother, then your gonna do her in, blah, blah, f**king blah!”
Chev Chelios refuses to be moved by a trash-talking gangster

The Bank Job
“Because it's tattooed on that stripper's ass, Kevin. What the f**k’s it matter how I know?”
Terry Leather answer’s Kevin’s query about how he knew Mozart composed his first minuet at 5