Jason Statham plays a tough cop, and yet this is not your average Jason Statham action vehicle. Actually, it's not an action movie. Not really.
Statham's a tough cop with a lot of troubles: he's having black-outs, he’s facing a burnout, and he's put on the case of a Cop killer (in this condition!). The mentality of the police force in this movie seems to be: If there's a mad cop killer out there, you'd better confront him with a mad killer cop.
If you think this is a straightforward, suspenseful cop versus killer movie, you're still on the wrong track. It's bleak, ugly, slow-moving and meandering, offering a vision on society and law enforcement that is ugly and depressing. There’s one chase scene (on foot, and it’s rather spectacular) but otherwise the film is more a mood piece, expressing a social realism that is not unlike some of Ken Loach’ s work. There are a few outbursts of violence, and they are particularly gruesome.
Statham isn't the ideal actor for this part, but he's acceptable. He doesn’t ruin the movie, but I think it would’ve been better with another actor. Paddy Considine (as Statham’s homosexual superior and buddy) and especially Aidan Gillen (as the cop killer) are superb. Problem is: we would've liked to see more of them, and learn more about their characters. Instead we get too many side characters and too much Statham in a bad mood. Those side characters are hard to care about, and Statham in a bad mood is a thing we’ve seen already too often in the past.
This is no easy viewing (predictably most Statham fans didn't like it), and it’s also far from perfect, but if you're looking for something different, you might want to give it a try.
