Jason Statham is one of the most popular action heroes of the 21st century, and many of the action movies of his career have been as crazy as action movies can get. Statham first popped on many action fan’s radar with his supporting role alongside Jet Li in The One, with Statham fully punching into mainstream attention a year later in The Transporter. Statham has since gone on to a long and very crowd-pleasing career in action movies, continuing with David Ayer’s 2025’s action film A Working Man, which marks Statham’s second collaboration with Ayer. A major part of the appeal of Statham’s action movies is the sheer extent to which Statham will go.
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The combination of Statham’s signature cockney accent, grizzled onscreen persona, his formidable skills as a martial artist, and his action movies frequently being as R-rated as possible, define his action films as unique mergings of simultaneously over-the-top and gritty action. (One has to wonder if the Hollywood remake of The Raid might actually get off the ground if Statham were involved.) While Jason Statham action movies are a wild sub-genre, here are five that definitely push action movie wildness to incredibly high levels.
Crank (2006)
If stupid, ridiculous, absurd, and fun were all combined into one highlight reel of stunts, chases, fights, and f-bombs, 2006’s Crank would have to be it. Helmed by directing duo Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor (credited as Neveldine/Taylor), Crank begins with Statham’s professional assassin Chev Chelios awakening to learn he’s been injected with a drug that will gradually slow his heart to a stop. However, Chev learns that he can counteract the drug’s effects by keeping his adrenaline as high as possible at all times, leading Chev to partake in every dangerous act he can think of while pursuing the men behind his drugging.
Crank has often and quite correctly been likened to a video game, with Chev’s quest taking him from level to level while acquiring crucial items to keep himself alive – all while keeping Chev on the run. Crank most definitely bends the rules of reality in Chev’s methods of fighting off the drugs’ effects (which at one point includes defibrillating himself while still conscious), and the movie pushes its R-rating to the most un-PC levels imaginable. As a non-stop bombardment of action, Crank is indeed a wild, wild Jason Statham vehicle, which even spawned a sequel, 2009’s Crank: High Voltage (despite Chev falling hundreds of feet from a helicopter in the movie’s climax). As Crank: High Voltage‘s poster puts it “He was dead… But he got better.”
The Expendables 2 (2012)
2012’s The Expendables 2 embraces the inherent blend of camp and ’80s testosterone to stand as the peak of the action hero ensemble franchise – as well as Jason Statham’s finest turn as mercenary Lee Christmas. Directed by Simon West, The Expendables 2 sends the team on a new mission to locate a device that can pinpoint the location of a hidden stash of plutonium. However, arms dealer Jean Vilain (Jean-Claude Van Damme) steals the device from the Expendables, along with murdering their new recruit Billy the Kid (Liam Hemsworth), leading the team into a showdown to stop Vilain and avenge Billy.
The Expendables 2 is the most self-aware, action-packed, and downright fun installment of the franchise, with the entire ensemble each snagging their own show-stealing moments. Statham shines better than ever as the gruff but amiable Lee Christmas, dropping one-liners like “I now pronounce you man and knife” and even getting a great fight scene against the then-up-and-coming Scott Adkins. With The Expendables franchise built to be a love letter to ’80s and ’90s action movies, The Expendables 2 is the real deal, claiming a place of honor in Jason Statham’s filmography along the way.
RELATED: Jason Statham Reveals Why He Has Avoided Superhero Roles
Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019)
The big surprise of 2013’s Fast & Furious 6 was Jason Statham’s end-credits entry into the franchise as Deckard Shaw, but his villain status lasted for all of one movie before he graduated to anti-hero in The Fate of the Furious and then to full-blown hero in Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw. Building on the rivalry of Dwayne Johnson’s Luke Hobbs with Statham’s Shaw in Furious 7 and The Fate of the Furious, Hobbs & Shaw brings its title characters together as a reluctant duo who must stop a doomsday virus being carried by Shaw’s sister Maddie (Vanessa Kirby) from being unleashed upon the world by the sinister Eteon terrorist organization. Opposing Hobbs and Shaw is the cybernetically enhanced super-terrorist Brixton Lore (Idris Elba), and with all of that on the board, fans of Statham, Johnson, Elba, and the Fast Saga are in for a big treat.
Recognizing the simultaneous rivalry and chemistry of Johnson’s Hobbs and Statham’s Shaw and greenlighting a spin-off headlined by the two is one of the best calls the Fast & Furious franchise has ever made, with Johnson and Statham’s banter keeping Hobbs & Shaw a consistently lively tale of family of a different sort. Under the direction of David Leitch of John Wick and Atomic Blonde fame, Hobbs & Shaw also uses the physical dexterity of Statham, Johnson, and Elba to their zenith, with some of best stunts and martial arts fights the Fast Saga has ever delivered, including the trio’s climactic showdown. Combined with the tech-powers of Elba’s Brixton Lore and the ever-increasingly absurdity of the Fast Saga (as seen in Hobbs holding onto a chain to keep a helicopter in place at one point) Fast & Furious: Presents Hobbs & Shaw is a blast and a wild ride for Jason Statham fans.
The Beekeeper (2024)
Few directors have understood how to deliver the most Stathamness possible from a Jason Statham action movie as well as David Ayer, a fact he demonstrates unequivocally in 2024’s action hit The Beekeeper. Statham stars as Adam Clay, a beekeeper retired from his previous occupation as a “beekeeper”, a clandestine group of assassins tasked with “protecting the hive” that is society. When Adam’s friend Eloise (Phylicia Rashad) takes her own life after losing everything in an internet phishing scam, Adam comes out of retirement to avenge Eloise and bring down the group responsible.
The Beekeeper has all the Jason Statham stunts and martial arts action that audiences love from the cockney action hero, but it is a rarity among Statham movies in that he portrays an entirely selfless hero fighting to defend society. Kurt Wimmer’s excellent script and David Ayer’s phenomenal direction also position The Beekeeper as a true John Wick-esque action movie with real worldbuilding and mythos that can easily be expanded upon, and evidently will be in the forthcoming The Beekeeper 2, with Indonesian action maven Timo Tjahjanto stepping into the director’s chair. The Beekeeper is a Jason Statham fan’s dream come true in its combo of action, stunts, one-liners, and world-building, and already more than deserves a spot on the Jason Statham’s Greatest Hits list.
Transporter 2 (2005)
Jason Statham’s action hero break in 2002’s The Transporter introduced Frank Martin to the world, and its 2005 follow-up Transporter 2 steps up everything that made its predecessor such a sleeper hit. Set in Miami, Florida, Transporter 2 finds Frank Martin working as a chauffeur for a wealthy local couple, only to find himself fighting to protect their son from a gang working for a Colombian drug cartel. Directed by Louis Letterier with action direction overseen by the late Corey Yuen, Transporter 2 pulls the same trick as its predecessor of placing Jason Statham into a Hong Kong action movie produced in the West, and surpasses the already phenomenal standards of The Transporter with a cavalcade of stunts, car chases, and martial arts action.
The third act of Transporter 2 especially brings plenty of Hong Kong-style fight choreography, including Frank’s one-man brawl with a dozen henchmen in a garage. Transporter 2 also dips into some of the more reality-ignoring territory of Statham’s subsequent Fast & Furious career, including such superhuman feats of car mastery by Frank as leaping his Audi A8 from one parking garage to another and even putting it into an aerial spin to clip the hook of a construction crane and pull off the bomb affixed to the bottom of the car. Transporter 2 has the perfect combination of Hong Kong action with absurd car feats and Jason Statham’s charismatic command of the role of Frank Martin. In a world full of wild Jason Statham action movies, Transporter 2 has to be the wildest.
Jason Statham will next be seen in A Working Man, debuting in theaters on March 28th.
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