Sylvester Stallone wrote and coproduced this generic action thriller, apparently in a fit of nostalgia for the misanthropic junk he starred in throughout the 1980s and ’90s. Jason Statham plays the Stallone character, a former DEA agent who’s retired to a small Louisiana town; inevitably the drug syndicate he busted tracks him down, and lots of people get tortured and killed. As in such Stallone “classics” as Cobra (1986) and Lock Up (1989), there’s little in the way of character, visual style, or suspense (Statham, like Stallone before him, is presented as such a remarkable killing machine that there’s never any question of whether he’ll triumph over his enemies). James Franco, playing one of the meth-head villains with a condescending wink in his eye, delights in the lowbrow material like a Bucktown hipster partying down at the VFW hall. Gary Fleder directed.
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R • 1 hour 40 min • 2013
