FEBRUARY 7 — True story. I fell in love with the new Jason Statham movie. Yes, the same Jason Statham who’s probably rivalled only by Nicolas Cage in terms of prolifically starring in an almost endless stream of unremarkable or just plain bad movies. 

Not that I’ve really stayed away from watching their movies, because for every Homefront or Left Behind that Statham and Cage fans had to endure, there’s also the possibility of a Crank 2: High Voltage, Hummingbird, Bad Lieutenant: Port of New Orleans and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance to make all that torture worthwhile.

It’s just that it sometimes feels like the prospect of seeing a new Statham or Cage film brings with it the familiarity and contempt that we often feel when listening to a song that’s been played to death on the radio. So of course it feels extra special when a new Statham movie sneaks up on and surprises the hell out of me the way that his latest, Wild Card did.

To illustrate just how low my interest was in yet another new Jason Statham movie, I even chose to attend the press screening of Russell Crowe’s directing debut The Water Diviner instead of Wild Card’s since they were held at the same time and on the same day at different venues. 

Thankfully there’s the long weekend last week, which of course led me to do a bit of movie watching in the cinema, and which resulted in me purchasing a ticket to seeWild Card since I had seen almost everything else on offer that day.

A film that’s more or less dumped straight into video-on-demand (VOD) in the US, Wild Card has so far received generally unenthusiastic reviews across the board, with most reviewers taking it as just another Jason Statham action film. 

What actually piqued my interest to see the movie in the first place was when I found out that it was written by the legendary William Goldman, who wrote stone cold Hollywood classics like All The President’s Men, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Marathon Man and the ever enduring The Princess Bride.

Sourced from Goldman’s own novel Heat, which he first adapted into a 1986 film called Heat starring Burt Reynolds, the key to unlocking the many pleasures of Wild Card can be found right in the definition of the phrase “wild card” itself. 

Is ‘Wild Card’ is the ‘Inherent Vice’ of Jason Statham flicks? — Reuters pic

The most obvious pleasures are of course the film’s sporadic action scenes, the first one occurring somewhere after the 30-minute mark (which should already tell you that this is not your usual Jason Statham flick), in which Statham ably destroys tough guys bigger than him using simple things like credit cards, ashtrays and spoons, all of which directed with style and clarity by director Simon West, who’s doing his best work here, probably even surpassing his achievements in Con Air.

But the film’s real pleasures are to be found in its multiple and seemingly endless (and unnecessary) digressions, as Statham’s character Nick Wild meets and interacts with a whole bunch of highly memorable supporting characters in a series of wonderfully impressive cameos from the likes of Stanley Tucci, Anne Heche, Hope Davis, Max Casella and Sofia Vergara. Even the movie’s villain, played by Milo Ventimiglia, actually feels more like a cameo than your standard big villain role.

It’s fitting that this is Goldman’s first screenplay to be made into a movie in 12 years, as instead of feeling like it’s another professional job for a Hollywood studio, it actually feels like you’re in the presence of a master screenwriter who has decided to simply do what he does best — write memorable, sparkling dialogue for great actors to have fun delivering them. To use a musical allegory, Goldman seems to be less concerned with writing a proper song but more interested in writing great solos for his players to riff on. In short, it’s a great jam session.

And as I’ve said before, it’s all there in the movie’s title. A wild card is “a playing card that can have any value, suit, colour, or other property in a game at the discretion of the player holding it.” A wild card can also be defined as “a person or thing whose influence is unpredictable or whose qualities are uncertain.” These two descriptions fit the movie to a tee. Even the third definition of wild card fits the film, which is when “a player or a team is allowed to enter a competition without having to qualify or be ranked,” especially as you reach the film’s end.

But because this is a Jason Statham movie, in which people get killed violently (and sometimes spectacularly), this whole facet of the film, which is its essence actually, tends to be and have been overlooked. If anything, Wild Card is the Inherent Vice (both the Paul Thomas Anderson film and the Thomas Pynchon book that it’s adapted from) of Jason Statham flicks. And that is a good thing.

* This is the personal opinion of the writers or organisation and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail Online.