It's Just Movies

— by FRANK MORITZ —

When I first look at the poster below, I see Jason Statham’s name in big bold letters. That’s a great way to hook someone onto a poster, put a very famous star’s name.

I like Jason Statham; he is one of my guilty pleasure actors — along with Mark Walberg, Bruce Willis and some others.

Statham has starred in a wide variety of films, from great films like “Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels,” “Snatch” and “The Bank Job” to very entertaining ones like “Crank,” “Crank: High Voltage,” “Cellular,” “The Transporter” (only the first one) and “The Italian Job.” But, like every actor who is technically an action star, he has been in some poor ones, such as “War,” “Death Race,” “The Pink Panther” and “Revolver.” So he has his ups and downs, but I really like to see him in a movie.

Now in the poster, under Statham’s name, is the title, “The Mechanic.” So obviously cars come to mind, but what’s this, no car is on the poster? Above Statham’s name is a picture of the lower half of Statham’s face holding a briefcase. Now that could mean a number of things, but if you pay more attention to the detail, you notice he is in a completely black leather suit, wearing a black glove, holding a black briefcase. So now I am thinking of mechanic by day, robber by night.

So I continue to look down the poster and I see more big names in bold. First comes the director’s name: Simon West. I don’t recognize this name just by looking at it, but when I look at his filmography I notice three films that he has directed: “Con Air” (1997), which I enjoyed; “The General’s Daughter” (1999) which I did not see, but recognize the name at least; and “Laura Croft: Tomb Raider” (2001), which if there was no Angelina there would be no movie. But after that I don’t recognize anything he has done.

There is only one more part of the poster left, it says “Screenplay by Karl Gajdusek” — another name I have never heard of. But the only difference between Karl and Simon is the fact that Karl has never written any movie before. He has apparently written four episodes of the “Dead Like Me,” which I have never seen.

So this poster really doesn’t tell us anything about the movie except who stars in it, who it is directed by and who wrote it. We can figure out by an educated guess that Jason Statham is a mechanic, but that is a given. I looked up the movie to see what it was about and all I could find was: A spy thriller set in a post 9/11 world. So now this makes me think that maybe Statham isn’t doing the same old film, and maybe we are in for the treat of him acting in a serious drama. Or I could be completely wrong and this could be an entertaining action film.

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