Jason Statham, action icon

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By Peter Suderman

Has anyone done more to redefine the action hero than Jason Statham?

Matt Damon upended the spy genre with his portrayal of Jason Bourne, and Daniel Craig breathed new life into the creaking James Bond series, but neither has yet managed to turn his action-hero persona into a franchise. That may represent conscious choices on their parts to avoid typecasting — but typecasting seems to be working fairly well for Mr. Statham.

The 36-year-old actor, who stars in this week's maniac gangster sequel, "Crank: High Voltage," has made more than a dozen movies since his breakout role in Guy Ritchie's hyperstylized 1998 crime comedy, "Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels." Many of those feature him in his signature guise as a slick, smooth criminal operative — a gangland assassin in the Crank films, a suit-and-tie driver in the "Transporter" films, a tough-talking bank robber in "The Bank Job."

Mr. Statham's movies haven't been Bourne- or Bond-sized megahits — he's a B-movie star. But most of his films, particularly the "Transporter" series, have earned their studios tidy sums. The string of successes has made Mr. Statham the reigning king of the midsized, niche-audience action film.

With his unique blend of attributes — the rakish European suave of Sean Connery, the cocky confidence of a rap star, the martial-arts skills of Jet Li, the receding hairline of Bruce Willis — he's following in the footsteps of action heroes past. But he's also remaking the idea of the action icon for the Xbox age into something influenced as much by video games, hip-hop and martial arts as by James Bond or John Wayne.

In a way, Mr. Statham has resurrected a version of the blue-collar action stars who dominated the 1980s and early 1990s. During that time, big, brawny bruisers like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone made dozens of movies in roughly the same mold: shoot-'em-ups and beat-'em-ups about beefy, inarticulate lugs with arms the size of felled oaks who bulldozed baddies by the dozen.

The core audience for all those films was the same: working-class men who wanted to see tough guys doing tough jobs — heroes, in other words, who resembled exaggerated versions of how they saw themselves.

The '80s films expanded and exaggerated the appeal of action toughs from the '70s like Charles Bronson. Strength, will, determination and aggression: These were the most prized traits. But so was a certain working-class credibility — a sense that these guys drank the same beer, watched the same sports and complained about their bosses the same way. Just such blue-collar relatability helped launch Bruce Willis into the first tier of action heroes in 1988's "Die Hard."

Eventually, though, the old action stars faded away, and few successors appeared ready. Mountain-size musclemen Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson and Vin Diesel both looked like potential heirs, particularly after Mr. Diesel's breakout success in "The Fast and the Furious." However, thanks to unfocused role choices and the vagaries of the box office, full-fledged action stardom never materialized for either performer.

With 2002's "The Transporter," Mr. Statham found a hit. The film capitalized on the hip-hop-fueled car culture that propelled "The Fast and the Furious" to box-office success but mixed its American-thug attitude with more than a dash of Euro-gangster flavor, a recipe that continues to define Mr. Statham's films.

To his credit, Mr. Statham followed up the success of "The Transporter" by doing what neither Mr. Diesel nor Mr. Johnson could manage: He made a whole lot of movies just like the one that first made him popular. That meant starring in sequels to "The Transporter" and now to "Crank," for starters. Even more, it meant making movies about cars — fast cars, cool cars, fancy cars, expensive cars, exploding cars — in films such as "The Italian Job," "Cellular" and "Death Race."

Those cars were crucial, for they gave Mr. Statham much-needed working-class cred, but not with the same blue-collar men who flocked to see "Rambo" and "Predator." Instead, he created an action-hero template that appealed to the sensibility of younger, more urban males: hip-hop soundtracks, a sharp eye for high-end street-wise fashion and, in "Crank," storytelling devices ripped right out of video games.

More important, he amped up the attitude. Mr. Statham, a former model, brings a sleek physicality to his action scenes, but his strength isn't his build. Rather, it's his unflappable attitude. Many action heroes have been tougher than their foes, but Mr. Statham bests his enemies simply by being cooler. Oh, he has abs of steel, and he's plenty tough — able to take down a dozen guys at a time with just his fists and feet — but his appeal is his calm, not his brawn.

In fact, he uses his attitude in nearly the same way a previous generation of action heroes used their biceps — to intimidate. He's effectively weaponized his cool. Indeed, Mr. Statham has completely mastered the unblinking stare-down, the ritual, attitude-fueled man-off between action-movie rivals, to the point where he can utter almost any line, no matter how silly — even, say, a fantastically goofy riff on the color purple, as he does in "Revolver" — and still sound like the hardest thug in the standoff.

These days, Mr. Statham is a one-man B-action franchise, the only performer to effectively follow the trail blazed before him, and studios seem to recognize it: Coming up on his schedule are "The Mechanic," an update of the Charles Bronson hit from the 1970s, and "The Expendables," a throwback action movie written and directed by Mr. Stallone and featuring an appearance by Mr. Schwarzenegger. Those two action heavyweights may be back temporarily, but as former monarchs, not ruling kings: This is Mr. Statham's territory now.