Film, cinema, the pictures. It doesn’t matter what you call them, I love the movies. You may say I’m a cinephile but I’m not the only one. And any cinephile worth their salt will tell you just how much pleasure they get from watching movies. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I’m about to tell you how much pleasure I get from watching movies. Not all the movies that I get pleasure from, because then we’d be here all day, but a very specific type of movie. It's one that was almost resigned to the straight-to-VOD limbo but is now back in theaters. Action schlock.

Despite the most brain-dead losers with taste worse than a child trying to convince you that cinephiles only like black-and-white independent arthouse films from obscure European countries, most cinephiles love them some schlock. In fact, I don’t trust one who doesn’t. I actually don’t trust anyone that doesn’t. If you only like tentpole pictures that tells me you’re taste is either boring or phony, most likely both. Everyone needs some schlock in their life.

There’s one man today who does action schlock better than some people who do A-grade blockbuster action. He’s a man who always has a job. Usually a manual labor job. He gets his wardrobe exclusively from Mark’s Work Wearhouse.* He never needs any backup even when taking on an army of dudes at once. And he always says the name of the movie. That man is Jason Statham.

*It’s come to my attention that these stores don’t exist outside of Canada so if you’re too lazy to Google it shame on you but it’s a clothing store chain that exclusively sells casual and industrial work wear.

But before we get to the man of the hour we need to take a step back in time to his predecessor.

Since the dawn of the action movie, there have been two types. There is the A-grade premium and the B-grade schlock. And before Statham, one man did B-grade shlock better than anyone. Jean-Claude Van Damme. While Arnold, Stallone, and Willis were making the A-grade premium action movies of the 80s and 90s, Jean-Claude Van Damme was making B-grade schlock. The kind that would normally only be seen by the true genre aficionados who had to rent it from the video store it had its premiere in. But these movies were all released in theaters and the world was better for it.

These movies were all put in theaters and therefore fondly remembered thanks to Van Damme. His screen presence, his physicality, and his action acumen lent these movies a level of fun that let them rise above what most of the general populace thinks of these types of films. It’s also for this reason that Van Damme is a beloved action icon and Steven Seagal only made 2 good films in his entire life, one of which has him die at the end of act one and Kurt Russell becomes the sole protagonist.

Universal Soldier, Kickboxer, Timecop, Sudden Death. The list goes on. These are not necessarily good films but you know what they are? Fun. Awesome even. No, none of them have the smartly plotted script, expertly filmed set-pieces and blockbuster spectacle of something like Terminator 2. That’s fine because they don’t need it, they feature things such as Jean-Claude Van Damme roundhouse kicking the Pittsburg Penguin’s mascot Iceburgh. That’s what the movies are all about. For as much as we want art to reflect something profound unto us, and make us see the world and ourselves in a different light, sometimes we just want to watch a man fight someone in a penguin costume to rescue his daughter.

As the 90s ended and Van Damme aged out of the spotlight, these B-grade action films entered a weird place. They started to fade. The world moved on to trying to copy The Matrix with every new action movie for a few years, then trying to copy the Bourne films. There were bright spots like Shoot ‘Em Up and Liam Neeson had a good run of them for a while after Taken. But still, they faded.

Then Marvel took over theaters and no one made any mid-budget movies for theaters anymore. Then the pandemic hit and the dream was all but dead. Except one man has been working his way up the ladder of action schlock for 20 years. Even as Hollywood moved into bigger blockbusters, more effects, and more beautiful fight choreography, one hard-working individual has been keeping B-grade action schlock in theaters.

I am writing this as I just got out of seeing Jason Statham’s latest movie A Working Man. I was originally just going to write a review of it but I really need to show my appreciation for the floodgates that Mr. Statham opened. Hence this very long post.

Jason Statham is this generation’s Van Damme and he has been since 2002 introduced the world to The Transporter. While other A-list action stars like Tom Cruise and Keanu Reeves are making premium A-grade action like Mission Impossible and John Wick, Statham has been pumping out things like Crank and Bank Job. That’s not an insult, it’s a compliment. Every town needs fine dining just as much as they need fast food and movies are no different. For every artistic ballet of bullets like the John Wick series, we need action films where the hero doesn’t even get punched once despite taking on an army of bad guys singlehandedly.

Statham has been comfortably making these types of films for 2 decades — all of them theatrical releases by the way — and all the pieces have finally come into place for an action schlock revival. For 20 years Statham has been keeping this brand of theatrical action film alive and it all crescendoed with perhaps the magnum opus of the genre.

The Beekeeper is a film in which Jason Statham plays a former black-ops assassin who worked for an organization within the government called the Beekeepers. It’s the Beekeeper’s job to step in when all the other government agencies cannot. To keep balance and to hold anyone accountable no matter who they are. Once he retires from the Beekeepers Statham becomes a literal beekeeper who speaks in bee metaphors. It’s never explained why he does this. It’s incredible.

After some online scammers steal all the money of the old lady who owns the farm Statham lives on and keeps his bees, she kills herself and he immediately goes on a warpath of vengeance. In a normal action movie, both A-grade or B-grade, he would go on a hunt through a series of leads and various henchmen to find the scammers who stole the money and kill them in the grand finale. Not in The Beekeeper. In this movie, Jason Statham finds the call center directly responsible almost immediately thanks to his Beekeeper contacts. So within the first 40 minutes of the movie, he kills a couple of guards and burns down the building. Revenge achieved. Except this isn’t your normal action movie.

Statham decides the only way to truly get justice is to kill every single person involved in this scam, all the way to the boss. And ladies and gentlemen, The Beekeeper does not believe there is a ceiling to how ridiculous you can go because the guy in charge of this entire call center scam operation isn’t just a rich tech bro douche, he’s the son of the President of the United States. So Statham works his way up to him. Beating the shit out of everyone in his way from henchmen to a private militia to the FBI, to the Secret Service to a large South African man who is dressed like a bee.

That last detail is never mentioned by anyone by the way. That’s why The Beekeeper is as incredible as it is. It knows how stupid and ridiculous it is and yet it never gives the game away. Every bee metaphor is played completely straight. Statham never cheekily says them, he remains deadly serious, his voice as gruff as ever. It’s as comical as it is badass. Statham fights about a dozen former Navy Seals single-handedly without getting so much as a scratch. It’s amazing and hilarious.

Statham’s latest has the same title that he could give his autobiography. A Working Man is not as good as The Beekeeper because it’s not as ridiculous in its premise or escalation but it’s still a grand time. In the same way that sometimes nothing hits quite like a Whopper, nothing hits like a dumb Jason Statham movie.

This movie features Jason Statham as a former Royal Marines commando who now works in construction. After his boss’s daughter is kidnapped by Russian human traffickers, the Stath busts out his old skills and kills half the Russian population of Chicago all by himself.

Here’s a quick list of incredible things that happen in this movie:

Forget the Marvel Cinematic Universe, long live the Jason Statham Has a Job Cinematic Universe.

Statham movies are the kind where it’s so ridiculous you can laugh at the action as much as you go “sweet”. Like Van Damme before him, his films are destined to be played on cable on repeat. Multiple generations of Dads will watch these movies standing up. The world is better for them existing and the world is better for them playing in theaters.

For 20 years Jason Statham has made schlocky B-grade action movies and for 20 years he’s kept this genre in theaters. It’s always been on DVD and VOD and streaming and always will be but Statham has kept it in theaters, even when it seemed like it was a genre that would never be given a theatrical release again.

Now we’re seeing the fruits of his labor. Den of Thieves 2 came out earlier this year. Novocaine is in theaters now. I’m publishing this on March 31 and within the month The Accountant 2 will be in theaters. So too will The Amateur, an action thriller starring Rami Malek and Laurence Fishburne about a CIA desk worker who goes to get revenge for his wife being killed. Fight or Flight, a movie where Josh Harnett is a mercenary on an airplane full of people who want to kill him comes out next month. Those are the kinds of films that a year or two ago would go straight to Prime Video or Paramount+ destined to be nothing but pop-ups shown to people who finished the last episode of Reacher or Yellowstone.

Now these are all movies that you can see in a theater. You can have a communal experience with like-minded people who want to get away from the world for 2 hours and just watch some bad guys get killed in cool and hilarious ways. Because that’s what the movies are all about. Laughing with a crowd as bad guys are hilariously outmatched. Reacting with a crowd at a particularly gnarly or awesome kill. The theater is a sacred place and these types of films deserve to be seen there.

Whether he’s been a Transporter, a Mechanic, or a Beekeeper. Whether he’s working a Bank job or an Italian one. For 20 years Jason Statham has been a working man. Working to keep the B-grade action movie in the public zeitgeist. Keeping it in theaters. His brand has cultivated a desire to see these types of films in theaters and after The Beekeeper the studios are finally listening to those desires. The Hollywood B-grade action film is back and the hive is back in balance.