Sunday, December 1, 2013

Homefront (2013): Review

With my father back in Michigan for the holiday, it was time to take in the most recent B-action movie with him and my brother.  Today we went and saw the new action released Homefront, written by Sylvester Stallone and starring Jason Statham and since I wasn't really expecting much I was pleasant surprised that this was a semi interesting, basic action movie in a little bit older style that was good enough.  When it comes to this type of action movie the main deciding factor for me is whether or not it does something that I find annoying and this one did not so for me it was time well spent.
Homefront was written by Sylvester Stallone and the story line was pretty basic with no a whole lot of depth of story but heavy on the relationships.  This movie hinted at some of the bounds of relationships which could have been further developed but were not, to me this was the one big bummer of the movie, I wanted more development between the characters.  I would have liked it to have been another twenty minutes and gone into these dynamics and backstories.
Homefront stars Jason Statham as Phil Broker am undercover agent in a biker gang who has been cooking and distributing crystal meth. Broker helps to bring down this ring and while doing this the gang leader is arrested but his son is killed.  He blames Broker for this and is determined to see him pay.  Broker retires from doing undercover works and moves to a small town in the south when his deceased wife grew up.  He moves there with his gradschool daughter Maddie, played Izabela Vidovic.  Not long after they movie there she is bullied by a boy at school, defends herself and gives the boy a bloody nose.  His mother meth addict Cassie Bodine Klum, played by Kate Bosworth, get angry at Broker and goes to her brother Gator Bodine, played by James Franco, the local meth distributor to scare Broker into knowing not to mess with them again.  While he does this Gator discovers that Broker was an undercover cop and hatches a plan to bring him down.  He brings in his ex-biker girl girlfriend Sheryl, played by Wynona Rider, to help execute the plan to get Broker and become bigger meth distributers. 
Like I said this movie is a pretty standard action movie but is a little more old school in presentation.  In it there are hand to hand fights, gun fights, and some car chases. Jason Statham continues being a solid action lead and right now he is one of my favorite action guys as he has the presence to be believable as a bad ass who could stand his own and kick some major butt.  I liked the casting of this movie and think that the characters play well together.  I really liked Kate Bosworth and although she is emancipated in real like, because of it she looks convincing as the meth addict. Even though she was only on screen or brief moments she was shown with depth.  This is the same with many of the supporting characters, they were only on screen for short moments, but during those times they showed that there could have been a lot more done with each of them.  They only one who seemed one dimensional was James Franco, but this may be because he has become one of those actors that I have trouble seeing melt into the role they are playing and see them throughout the performance.
This movie continues to do the thing that I find annoying where they bring the action in really tight and it is a bit hard to follow the actual fight or now who did what while it was happening, but it wasn't too bad in this movie because the action sequences were kept reasonable in length.
Basically this is an action movie to see if you like action movies because it is interesting enough and has the action the it needs to keep it going.  The main negative is that at time it does seem to mosey on through in pace.

My Rating: 2

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