Nope, I didn’t like it at all. I usually like Jason Statham movies, to the point that more than once things here have gone like this: what movie is that? - I don’t know, but there’s Jason in it - ok then, let’s watch it.
This time though, I didn’t like it at all. First of all, he’s the bad guy 90% of the time, then does a good thing and we should call him a hero.... second, I thought this time around we would be spared the shallow romance since the co-protagonist was a nun, but yet again, no, there’s the romance with the nun... sigh. Third, the beginning is too forced, the middle is boring, the ending is annoying.
The story:
The very beginning is not too clear, Joey was a soldier than something happened and he was now wanted by the court martial, something like that. We find him again one year later, a homeless guy sort of crazy (because of drugs, alcohol or PTSD? unclear at this point). Bad guys approach all the homeless, he has a girl named Isabel run while he tries to stop them but he can’t fight and they beat him then manages to run away. He also manages to enter an apartment from the roof, and guess what, the apartment is empty and richly decorated, the clothes are all his size, there’s a message on the answering machine conforming that Damon, the man living there, won’t be back before a few months have passed, there are the keys to a car he can use, and he even finds a new credit card with its codes in the guy’s mail.... come on, really???? No million-dollar-cash? :-/ I mean, come on, this is too much, I know very well about hero/protagonist’s luck, but this !! It’s like he found the genie of the lamp!
He still drinks too much. He gives money to the nun that helps the homeless and asks her about Isabel. Very honestly she speaks to her mother-superior or something and gets permission to use the money for something she really really wants. She uses it to buy a ticket for a ballet.
He starts changing, he stops drinking and puts fliers around asking Isabel to get in touch with him. Poor girl, they caught her and forced her to work as a prostitute. She calls him saying not to worry about her, she’ll work for them until she’s paid what they want..
He speaks to Damon’s neighbours saying that he’s Damon’s boyfriend and he’s letting him use the apartment while he’s away to get himself back on track. He starts eating healthy, exercising, and finds a job as a dish-washer in a Chinese restaurant. When there are troubles with drunk customers, he’s called to deal with it and gets noticed by some Chinese boss so they hire him as ‘bodyguard’, a batterer, someone that does the dirty work, but he doesn’t care, he only seems interested in the money. He’s making a lot of it, and he sends foods to the nun for the homeless people. He meets again his wife, who now has a very difficult/shitty life with a daughter and no money, and he gives her a lot, saying there’s more to come.
He leaves a red dress for the nun, and when she tries to return it she also tells him that Isabel’s body has been found, beaten to death.
The nun tells him that she sold some stuff to give him his money back but he refuses it. She tells him that there are a lot of ‘Isabels’ out there, and he should use her clean money to start a new honest life. He finds the two guys that caught Isabel and beat him up, and now that he’s healthy he beats them up and asks about Isabel’s murderer, but they don’t know much, only that it was a ‘customer’.
The nun wears the red dress to meet him outside, she’s so nervous she gets drunk, and tells him that she dreamed of being a ballerina, and then asks him to kiss her and he does (what a nice guy, huh? :-/ )
Quite shaken she runs away. Not surprisingly the cops can’t find who killed Isabel.
The nun tells him her story: Her parents wanted her to become a gymnast instead, and her coach abused her, raping her when she was but a little girl of ten years old: ‘he did it 17 times. it would have been the 18th’ but she cut his throat instead. She was very young so instead of sending her to prison she was sent to be a nun.
Joey asks the Chinese for information on the guy who killed Isabel, and they ask him a favour in return, a job that nobody wants. They also deal in human-trafficking, people imported from China inside boxes, and he has to count how many of them are still alive. A really chilling scene, so upsetting.
The ‘customer’ keeps hitting girls, but as promised they give him his name.
It’s finally October 1st, the day Damon comes back, the day of the ballet, the day it all must end.
He asks the nun to take some good pictures of him to leave his daughter, then they have sex at the apartment but have to run away when Damon comes back.
She asks him to join her at the theatre, but he has stuff to do. He gives a bag full of money to his wife, and his pictures to his daughter. Good.
At night, instead of joining her he goes to kill Isabel’s murderer. The nun finds him drunk after it’s all done. He says he’s finished now. He tells her what happened during the war, he killed five random people for revenge, out of rage.
The nun leaves, choosing to go to a mission in Africa, and reads his letter: he says he gave money to the poor, and also information to the police on the human-trafficking , and also money to Damon for what he took.
He’s on the run now, maybe he’ll get caught, maybe not, the movie ends and we simply don’t know.
Yawn. It’s finally over, needless to say I won’t ever watch it again...
Joey - Jason Statham
Cristina the nun - Agata Buzek
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