Movie reviews
The act of finding the picture saves his life, which may well be fate — either way, Logan serves out his tour, rotates back home, and sets out to find his lucky charm. It’s not giving away too much to say that he finds her, given that he ambles up to Beth’s (Taylor Schilling) ‘dog motel’ even before the opening credits stop rolling, but then the whole point of The Lucky One, which is directed by Scott Hicks and adapted from the novel by Nicholas Sparks, is to compare and contrast various kinds of manliness: the surly, possessive aggression of Beth’s ex-husband and town sheriff, Keith (Jay R Ferguson) is entirely opposed to the Zen-like calm of Logan, who not only plays chess, but likes to read philosophy and play piano too. Which of the two men is likely to woo Beth as a father-figure for her son Ben (Riley Thomas Stewart)? It’s a foregone conclusion, of course, but Efron deftly sidesteps the clichés that litter the narrative with a minimalist take on the strong, silent hero, his soulful eyes and brooding presence investing this movie a touch more heft that its predictable script deserves.
Safe (16s) is a standard Jason Statham vehicle: loud, fast and roaring a sound and fury that signifies nothing. Reduced to suicidal tendencies when Russian mobsters kill his pregnant wife, ex-cop Luke Wright (Statham) has one last shot at redemption him when he rescues a young girl, Mei (Catherine Chan), from the clutches of a Triad. The trouble is, Mei is a maths genius, and has various Triad safe codes worth millions memorised — codes the Russians want. And so the Russians and the Chinese go after Luke and Mei, with a host of corrupt cops thrown in for good measure. That, essentially, is the plot, but writer-director Boaz Yakin pares every excess pound of flesh off this already thin material to create an adrenaline-fuelled thriller that makes a virtue of Statham’s deadpan persona. The villains are cardboard cut-outs, the body-count is preposterously high and the twists and turns are rarely surprising, but given that the story takes place over one night, and that the movie is almost entirely comprised of one bravura set-piece action sequence after another, a marked lack of character development isn’t really an issue. Safe is an expertly crafted stripped-down shoot-’em-up.
