I think this is the third time I've seen this, and I still enjoy it, but on a few different levels now.
I found the direction to be a little more unbalanced than I remember. There are some fantastically unique ideas in the movie, but there are a few structural issues that don't age well.
A few direction choices that I enjoy: first, I like the use of split-screen for phone calls. It's a common tool, but the way that the screen keeps bumping over with every line really keeps things interesting. The other thing that I noticed was that there were at least two instances where Statham would be on a phone call with someone, and the other person would be hidden in the frame. This is hard to explain without a visual, but...
- Statham is on the telephone with his doctor. He's walking through the back end in a mall. He's walking down a narrow hallway. If you look at the right side of the hallway, you can see his doctor on the phone, talking to him. It's placed on a wall. Really peculiar, and it doesn't make any real sense, but it's truly unique.
- Statham is on the phone with... the young guy, whose name I can't remember. He's driving. If you look at his side mirror, you'll see the other guy on the phone.
The thing that I didn't like this time through was that the structure needed a little more of a rise in action. One of the things that makes this movie work is how ridiculous the situation gets. There are absurd things, like Statham riding a police motorcycle wearing a hospital gown. He plows through an indoor mall for no real reason. He has sex in public, in front of a cheering audience. These are hilarious, and they make the movie work. But the problem is that they aren't arranged the way I'd like them to be. In particular, he plows through the mall way too early in the movie. Right after the public sex scene, he runs off to have a brief fight in a warehouse, which isn't all that exciting. The escape from that warehouse fight is pretty fun, but it's nowhere near as fun as things that came earlier. There's a bit of downtime when he finally talks to his doctor. Then his big finish fight seems anticlimactic compared to the wild ride that was happening earlier.
There's one thing that really saves this movie. It feels cheap. The effects work is clearly cheap. Things don't move right, but it helps. It makes this feel like a cartoon.
I realized that Statham's character isn't especially likable, but it doesn't seem to matter. So what if he violently kills people? It's all a cartoon anyway.
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