Mom had the bright idea of renting movies from Redbox the other day. The results were not promising. It was released as Hummingbird in the U.K. and Crazy Joe in France. Action hero Jason Statham stars in Redemption.
I like Jason Statham. He has a fun vibe surrounding him and I enjoy his stunt routines, something this film didn’t have enough of. Statham plays Joey Jones, a homeless ex-military man who…I honestly don’t even know. He’s traumatized from his experiences in Afghanistan and shows symptoms of PTSD, but we don’t learn anything more than that the entire movie. Statham’s character doesn’t reach any levels of depth. We know his life is bad and he’s in a lot of pain, but we don’t know much else. Joey’s mind is like a steel door and there’s simply no way to enter unless he opens the door, something the plot does not allow.
Speaking of the plot, one wonders if this movie has one. This movie’s framework is held by flimsy popsicle sticks in its characters and its dialogue leaves little on the viewer’s plate. You don’t get a healthy sampling of anything in this script. Statham takes most of the screen time and there aren’t many other characters. Director and writer Steven Knight leaves Statham to carry the movie by himself with very few tools to use to aid him with this task, so few that it makes the task unachievable. At a running time of 93 minutes, this movie is far too long.
Once again, if you’re new to my blog, I’ve always ranked movies on a scale of 0-100 (I don’t know why, I just always have). Here’s the grading scale.
90-100 It’s a great movie and definitely one worth buying. (42, Just Go With It, Real Steel, Miracle, Scrooge)
80-89 It was a pretty good movie and definitely one worth seeing, but it doesn’t quite scratch my top ten percentile. (The Hunger Games, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Gangster Squad, Elf, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug)
70-79 It’s okay but I’ve seen better. It has its moments, but it has its flaws, too. (The Usual Suspects, 21 Jump Street, Escape Plan, Captain America: The First Avenger, Dawn of the Dead)
60-69 It’s got plenty wrong with it but I still got enjoyment out of this one. (Pacific Rim, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Disaster Movie)
50-59 This movie isn’t intolerable but it’s not blowing my mind either. I’m trying really hard to get some sort of enjoyment out of this. (Along Came Polly, Aliens, Alien Resurrection, Full Metal Jacket, Thor)
40-49 This movie is just mediocre. It’s not doing anything other than the bare minimal, so morbidly boring that sometimes I’m actually angry I watched this. (Patriot Games, The Great Gatsby, Pitch Black, Alien, Serendipity)
30-39 Definitely worse than mediocre, the 30’s ironically define the 1930’s, full of depression, lack of accomplishments, poverty and just so dumb. (The Contract, Pride and Prejudice)
20-29 What did I just watch? Cliches, stupidity, nothingness, did I mention stupidity? Just…wow. (The Sum of All Fears, Thor: The Dark World)
0-19 Watching this movie resulted in one or more of the following: seizure, loss of brain cells, falling asleep/unconsciousness, feel you wasted your time/day, accomplished nothing for you, left the movie knowing less about it then you did going into it, constantly asking yourself why you came to see this movie, or near-death experience. In short, staring at a wall was just as entertaining as watching this movie. This movie deserved a sticker or a label that said, “WARNING: EXTREME AMOUNT OF SUCKAGE.” (Midnight Cowboy, Dark Fury, Alien 3)
My score for Redemption: 35.
Knight appears unsure of what angle he wants his story to take, instead composing subplots and a needlework of misplaced character strings in the hopes that they become knit together at the end or that one of them pans out into something productive. Instead of one unified story line, this movie become a story spiderweb and the audience is unsure of which line they’re supposed to follow.
*SPOILER ALERT* IF YOU DON’T WANT THE MOVIE SPOILED, STOP READING!!!
*SPOILER’S EDITION*
Agata Buzek plays the nun Cristina and there are some questions I have. She has a confessional with Joey and says that she used to take gymnastics as a kid. She was raped by her instructor a number of times until she slit his throat. She was traumatized, I get that, but that takes some guts. How did she get away with that by the way? She did him like a cold-blooded killer. Wouldn’t there have been an investigation or something? How did she become a nun? I believe if you truly repent for your sins then you can be forgiven, no matter what you did, but I had a difficult time picturing this. Has she been pretending to be a nun this whole time just to get away from the world?
Also, they keep showing us views from a drone. Are drones allowed to fly freely over London? Why are there drones following Joey? It was annoying because it’s not like you can see much up there.
Happy Holidays everybody!
wordsofwistim 