Movie review: Safe ***

Stars: Jason Statham, Catherine Chang, Robert John Burke, James Hong
Director: Boaz Yakin
Rated: R
Showing: Southside Cinema week of Friday, May 18. For more information call 297-2821.
Runtime: 94 minutes
Action/thriller

His Awesomeness, Jason Statham, has let it be known that he chooses his films based on the fight choreographer the producers hire. Often as not, that blows up in his face.

But with Safe, working with choreographer J.J. Perry (Haywire), that strategy pays off. A slow-building B-movie thriller, the plot is nothing new for Statham. There's a girl in need of his protection from assorted gangs of bad men. But the dialogue crackles with flinty one-liners.

His bald skull and perma-stubbled face lean into the camera like the athlete he was and is, bristling at the bit, ready to get on with the serious citywide butt-whipping he's about to lay on the Russian and Chinese mobs and New York cops on the take.

We meet 11-year-old Mei (Catherine Chan) in a Russian mobster's office. Flash back to a year before, when Mei was in a Chinese school correcting her teacher's math. A Chinese mobster (James Hong, reliably evil) needs her as his courier. Numbers on a computer "leave a trail that's easy to follow," he purrs in Mandarin. Little girls who can remember long strings of numbers do not.

Writer-director Boaz Yakin (Remember the Titans, Uptown Girls) keeps us off balance, spending much of the film's first half hour following Mei, winning sympathy for her plight. Shipped to America, in the care of a murderous adoptive dad (Reggie Lee), she's had to learn "business" the hard way - witnessing torture, murder, shakedowns and corruption.

Then, there's mixed martial arts cage fighter Luke Wright (Stratham), a man who has just crippled an opponent in the ring in a fight Luke was supposed to throw. The Russian gamblers plan elaborate punishment for him. They kill his pregnant wife and turn him loose, promising to murder anyone he gets close to, no matter where he goes.

Then Luke meets Mei and finds, in her, a purpose: keep her "Safe."

What we have here is basically an American Transporter, with Statham caught up in the most jaw-dropping, quick-cut fights you've seen in years. He plows through Russians on the subway, Chinese gangsters in a casino and cops in between, on the mean streets, which he navigates with dazzling automotive dexterity. Occasionally he stops long enough to make a threat.

The dialogue and the characters are better than the plot. And the fights are better than even the one-liners. Statham never phones it in, though his roles can seem to be one long version of the same guy: haunted and hunted, in need of a shave.

Statham makes Yakin's lines sing. And thanks to Perry, he brings the pain. In the world of B-movie action, Statham's still the safest bet there is.

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