The 12 Best Jason Statham Movie Moments

Daniel Day-Lewis has been hailed as one of the greatest actors in cinematic history. Indeed, he’s won three Academy Awards, which is exactly three more than fellow English actor Mr. Jason Statham. But has Daniel Day-Lewis ever choked a man with a handful of casino chips, K.O.’d a dude with a coin, killed a fella with a spoon, or punched a bloke in the fist with his own head? Jason Statham did all these in the same movie. There’s just no contest.

Statham has become one of the 21st century’s most dependable action superstars. That’s why it’s exciting that he’s got a new film out now, A Working Man. So to mark the occasion, here are our favourite moments from Jason Statham’s hard-hitting and hilarious career. Because let’s face it: Until they start giving out Oscars for walking through fire, water-skiing blindfolded, or successfully taking up piano at a late age, it’s the least we can do.

12. Homefront

You ever get the feeling that Jason Statham’s catalogue of action heroes are all the kind of guy who could take down three blokes with his hands tied behind his back? Well, you should, because in Homefront Statham annihilates three dudes while his hands are tied behind his back. What better way to kick things off than this?

11. The Beekeeper

If there’s one thing that stung about The Beekeeper, it’s that he’s too sweet on some of the scam call centre employees – letting them scurry out of the building before he blows it up simply because they apologised. We don’t watch Jason Statham movies to see him let the villains live, damn it! Fortunately, Statham partially makes it up to us by trailing the call centre manager, strapping him to his truck, and sending the empty vehicle off the end of a bridge, dragging the screaming scumbag behind it. They say bumblebees aren’t particularly efficient flyers, but at least they fly better than a 1967 Ford F-100.

10. Wild Card

Let’s double back to the movie alluded to in the intro, which is Wild Card – a film that criminally flopped at the box office despite being directed by the man who bestowed Con Air upon the world, boasting a bonus appearance from Stanley Tucci with hair, and honestly featuring some of the best fight scenes of Statham’s entire career. In the final showdown, Statham guts no less than five gun-toting goons – armed only with a spoon and a butter knife – and walks away without a scratch. Jason Statham: king of knifey spoony.

9. Death Race

Paul W.S. Anderson’s long list of video game adaptations haven’t exactly won the man fistfuls of prestige but, if we’re being honest, he deserves at least a pat on the back for his slightly-camp 2008 killer car feature, Death Race, where he vividly demonstrated a Mad Max: Fury Road-level commitment to crashing giant death trucks an impressive seven-odd years before George Miller actually made that movie. Statham getting the better of the Juggernaut by conspiring with his bitter rival is easily the highlight of the film. The score remains: practical effects - one million, CGI - zero.

8. The Meg

Of course, on the topic of taking down giant monsters, no list of Jason Statham’s most memorable movie moments would be remotely complete without the time the man literally murdered a megalodon with a metal spear in The Meg. After slicing its guts open from teeth to tail, Statham surfs the giant shark as it leaps skyward, shoving a stick straight into its eyeball in the process. Toppling back into the water, the prehistoric beast is subsequently devoured by dozens of its more diminutive descendants. It doesn’t matter where the predator comes from: If it bleeds, you can kill it.

7. The Transporter

Sliding in at number seven is one of Statham’s most iconic action roles: Frank Martin, the Transporter. Of course, the 2002 original is basically 90 minutes of Hong Kong-quality fight scenes from prolific action director Corey Yuen, so how do you choose just one moment? The container fight? The axe fight? The bus fight? There are a lot of fights. Well, the answer has to be the oil fight, where Frank greases himself up to literally slip through his enemies’ fingers before turning the tables on them with a set of bicycle pedals and a series of savage spinning heel kicks.

6. The Fate of the Furious

Speaking of heels, the villainous Deckard Shaw’s heel-face turn in the Fast and the Furious saga was controversial for a while, but ever since Fast 9 confirmed he never actually killed Han during Tokyo Drift, we can all enjoy his past exploits without feeling guilty. Naturally, one particular moment that’s hard to go past is the Hard Boiled-inspired airborne rescue of Dom and Elena’s infant son in The Fate of the Furious. Jason Statham has enjoyed action aplenty in the Fast saga since his post-credits appearance in Fast & Furious 6, but this mix of gun-fu and jokes about poo is arguably his greatest highlight.

5. The Expendables

Earning his spot alongside the heaviest of Hollywood hardmen in Sylvester Stallone’s Expendables franchise, Jason Statham’s Lee Christmas has had plenty of time to shine throughout the series, from kicking fellow countryman Scott Adkins into an idling helicopter to firing a flare from the front of a flying boat for a little fry-and-die. However, his most memorable moment is the brief but brutal basketball court beatdown he gives to his girlfriend’s abusive ex and every one of his useless mates. Christmas may only come around once a year, but when he does, he smashes the crap out of six dudes in about 16 seconds. He’s like Santa, only instead of a nice list he just has a knife list.

4. Spy

In an absolutely scene-stealing performance in what’s already an extremely funny film, Jason Statham fully flexes his comedy muscles in 2015’s Spy as Rick Ford: the unkillable secret agent extraordinaire who’s immune to 179 different types of poison and makes his own suits. Statham enjoys plenty of hilarious moments in Spy, but the best is when he regales Melissa McCarthy with tales of his legendary toughness: “I drove a car off a freeway, on top of a train, while I was on fire. Not the car. I was on fire.”

3. Transporter 2

Come on. You didn’t think we were going to forget the infamous Transporter 2 barrel roll, did you? Calm as a cucumber, Frank Martin flings his two-ton Audi upside down to dislodge the bomb strapped beneath it, all with the complete confidence of a man flicking a speck of soot from the shoulder of his suit. Tell your teachers: Physics are cancelled.

2. Crank: High Voltage

After surviving falling several thousand feet from a helicopter, Chev Chelios’ clearly superhuman heart has been stolen by Chinese gangsters. That is the plot of Crank 2. As such, you shouldn’t be surprised when, at one stage, Chev hallucinates an entire fight at a power station as a souped-up, 100-foot-tall kaiju version of himself, complete with a mask of… his own head. This is a real movie that definitely happened.

1. Snatch

What better choice for number one than Snatch, where Jason Statham – in only his second film appearance after he debuted in Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels – didn’t just shine amongst Hollywood heavyweights like Brad Pitt, Benicio Del Toro, and the late Dennis Farina – he came away with a whole host of the movie’s most-quotable lines. It’s tricky to pick a favourite quip from a movie chock full of them, but Turkish’s iconic response to Tommy’s desire to carry a gun seems like a safe bet (“What is a gun doing in your trousers?” “For protection.” “Protection from what? Zee Germans?”). A safer bet than anything Brick Top suggests, at least.

Did we miss any of your favourites? Mean Machine? The Mechanic? Hobbs & Shaw? Let us know in the comments.