The punishingly witless action flick Homefront is more a movie from the 1980s than of these times. Starring in a script from Expendables mate Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham delivers all the expected scowls and growls, but there’s no originality, nuance or even dumb-fun catharsis to recommend this inept exercise in punch-’em-up justice.
Statham (skating through this material, his glowering charisma set comfortably on autopilot) stars as Phil Broker, an undercover DEA agent by way of Interpol who’s working to bring down a Louisiana biker gang peddling meth when things go sideways. Flash forward a couple years, to when retired single dad Broker’s 10-year-old daughter Maddy (Izabela Vidovic) has a schoolyard altercation with a bullying classmate. The offending kid’s junkie mother, Cassie (Kate Bosworth), takes exception and leans on her meth-cooking, boat mechanic brother Gator, (James Franco), to try to intimidate the small town newcomer.
When Gator finds out about Broker’s past, however, he sees an opportunity. Hoping to ingratiate himself with those who can expand his little drug empire, Gator taps his carnal acquaintance Sheryl (Winona Ryder) to offer up Broker’s location and identity to the imprisoned gangster whose son was killed in the aforementioned undercover sting gone wrong. Said crime boss then dispatches an emissary, Cyrus (Chuck Zito), who turns out to be even more of a psychopath than Gator, putting Broker and many others in danger.
Homefront is adapted from one of a series of novels by Chuck Logan featuring the character of Broker, and there’s the core of an interesting, layered study of modern-day rural rot here — of a morally compromised sheriff who probably doesn’t really want the worst for his town, and other characters who at various points recognize the danger of things spinning out of control. Any subtext from the novel, though, is sacrificed at the altar of lowest-common-denominator stupidity.
Stallone’s screenplay is full of empty, puffed-up talk of “backwoods reckoning.” It doesn’t effectively sketch out Gator’s villainous plot, and if his absence of a good plan is really the point, it doesn’t successfully exploit that either. Instead, the script ineffectually passes the baton of chief threat back and forth between Gator and Cyrus, tossing in some tone-deaf matchmaking instincts on the part of Maddy, who surely wouldn’t mind her dad getting together with school psychiatrist Susan (Rachelle Lefevre). The fumbled result plays like a dumb-jock, steroidal riff on Walking Tall, or a cousin of 1989 cult classic Road House, minus any of the latter’s fun or sense of self-awareness.
Cinematographer Theo Van De Sande captures what pungent, on-location humidity of the Louisiana bayou he can, but is undercut by the dictums of action-thriller filmmaking. Director Gary Fleder has a filmography that leans more on dramatic and psychological thrillers, a fact that certainly shows when it comes time for Homefront‘s fisticuffs and explosions, which are terribly staged, with Fleder and editor Padraic McKinley committing spatial awareness homicide via quick cuts from contrasting angles.
Housed in a regular plastic blue case, Homefront comes to home video in a two-disc Blu-ray/DVD combo pack, complete with an Ultraviolet digital HD download code for the movie, allowing for playback on televisions, computers, tablets and smartphones. In addition to the requisite chapter stops, supplemental features consist of a three-minute EPK featuring a few interview clips with the major players, plus an eight-minute-plus collection of deleted scenes that focuses chiefly on Broker’s relationship with Maddy. To purchase the Blu-ray/DVD combo pack via Amazon, click here; to purchase via Half, click here. Or if brick-and-mortar retail establishments are still your thing, by all means, have a go at that. D+ (Movie) C- (Disc)