Interview: Jason Statham

By Fred Topel: 2006-08-31 00:00:00

Fans of Jason Statham’s wild action are in for a big treat with Crank. What it lacks in martial arts choreography, it more than makes up for with insane stunt work. Statham is one to do everything they’ll let him, including hanging out of a helicopter in Crank. With this one, he basically signed on to see if the filmmakers, first timers Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, could pull it off.

“I just said there is no way they are going to shoot this, it's too crazy,” said Statham. “I just thought on the initial read I just thought no one is going to do this. Who are these guys? First time directors? You need someone with experience to be able to handle something as silly and wacky as this is. They came up to Canada to see me, I was up there working and they explained their crazy approach and told me about Mark's technique on roller blades and they have got these fancy cameras that he wants to strap. I mean, I was sold. I wanted to try and do justice to their little vision and it was a good risk I think. There is always a risk. You don't know how it's going to turn out, you got to be careful.”

When he’s about to do a stunt that puts him in harm’s way, Statham keeps it to himself. “I usually tell all my loved ones after I have done it. 'Hey, guess what I did today? I was in a helicopter 20,000 feet above L.A.' 'You f*cker!' It's best not to tell. What they can do is provoke doubt and worry so you best not just go there. Just do it and talk about it after.”

Crank casts Statham as Chev Chelios, a hit man who wakes up one morning dying of a poison injected by his rivals. His doctor tells him that the only way to stave off the poison is to keep his adrenaline going, so he riles himself up to get his poisoners. His attempts, from downing Red Bull to picking fights, required some adrenaline from Statham too.

“What is my crank? Red Bull! Oh my God, I drank so much of it, when we pull into the gas station. Stupid old me decided to slurp out of the can and after about four cans of I said 'Have you got any water?' and by then it was too late, I had already consumed about four cans straight. It's not a good feeling. You just have to find a way of getting there, it's one of those things. You just find your technique.”

A former athlete, Statham is no stranger to adrenaline, and he still craves it today. “I did a bit of scuba diving over the last few years and when you see a shark for the first time there are a few extra bubbles that escape from your body. I suppose that is a real moment of a rush of adrenaline. I don't know if I need it but it is certainly good when it comes. I don't go searching for it. It's not like I am a junkie that wants to throw himself from very tall buildings but some people are and I love them kind of people. I don't think it is conducive to making films. If it goes wrong that is the end of you. It's high risk. High risk is high adrenaline.”

One of Chev’s romps takes him through a hospital, where he shocks himself and steals drugs. He also ends up escaping in a hospital gown, baring almost all for the audience. “There is a lot of stuff in the rushes that obviously didn't make the cut. But it would be very funny to see because you jump over a barrier with a hospital gown and it all flies up. You just got to choose when to cut and when not to. It was funny but this whole film was very consistent in having me either embarrassed or charged with adrenaline or it was a crazy old time this one.”

At no point does Chev start delivering roundhouse kicks. He doesn’t have the training that The Transporter has, so Statham had to find more basic ways to be brutal. “Because this is not really a martial arts kind of fight movie, this is a completely different thing. This is an action movie but with something completely different to what I have done. This is a guy that is just a big man and he can have a fight if he needs to.”

Having started out as an ensemble player in Guy Ritchie’s little British films, Statham has come a long way to headlining his own action movies. “You do gain confidence. Every movie you do you find something in yourself that you probably didn't know that you had and a director will find something in you that you can nurture and find and bring for the next one. So you do grow and especially when you are given the chance to be a lead in a movie, all of a sudden you do have to find a confidence and once you have done something and achieved it to a certain level you feel like you can go and try and find something else. It is a progression, the more you do the more you start looking for stuff that is going to test you. For me in the early years I played something very close to my own personality which is a safe thing to do and a way to learn about the whole process of making a movie an finding your own confidence. Now I have gained a lot more experience over the last few years.”

In the future, Statham hopes to explore more new territory, but he’ll never turn his back on the action genre that has been good to him. “What you are really looking for is someone to say 'You know what, this is nothing like what you have done before. Come and try this.' and that is basically what I am looking for but I will always do, the good thing is not to lose the perspective of play to your own strength which people do actually like what I do in the action genre. It's good to do what you can do well so if you eat the same meal every day you are going to get bored of it so you want to keep yourself interested and give yourself a challenge and that can only be allowed if somebody else is willing to give you that challenge.”

Uwe Boll clearly offered him something in Dungeon Siege, but Statham was ambiguous about that one. “This is completely different to what I did with Uwe and again it was another challenge. It was a chance to work with Tony Ching who is an amazing action choreography who did House of Flying Daggers, don't know if anyone has ever seen that, the guy is one of the best action choreographers in the world so you are constantly looking to work with good people and the end product is something that you don't get to see, it's not always I your control and you take your chance and with this movie Crank we did well with what we did.”

Crank opens today.

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