Before Jason Statham made his screen acting debut in Guy Ritchie’s 1998 crime film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, he was a member of Britain’s national diving team for over a decade. After transitioning to acting, Statham transferred the agility and precision he acquired from diving to his study of Chinese martial arts, specifically karate and kickboxing, which have been featured most prominently in Statham’s action films over the past 25 years.
Statham’s breakthrough starring role as criminal courier driver Frank Martin in the 2002 action film The Transporter provided him with the perfect vehicle with which to attach his laconic humor and muscular intensity to elaborate fight scenes, in which he has distinguished himself from other martial arts actors over the past 20 years through his ability to blend action and character.
This is impressively displayed in the 2015 action film Furious 7, in a scene in which Statham’s character, mercenary Deckard Shaw, infiltrates a Diplomatic Security Service field office, only to be caught by Dwayne Johnson’s character, Luke Hobbs, who then attempts to arrest Shaw, who refuses to be taken without a fight.
What follows is an epic fight scene in which the undersized Shaw uses his agility, cleverness, and precision striking to frustrate Hobbs, who is almost killed after Shaw detonates a bomb in the office before escaping. However, in addition to being one of the most thrilling fight scenes in the history of the Fast & Furious franchise, the scene is most notable for establishing Shaw, like Statham, as a force to be reckoned with.
Jason Statham Has Practiced Various Forms of Martial Arts
Jason Statham’s on-screen fighting style has been grounded in karate and kickboxing since his feature-starring debut in The Transporter.The actor, who holds a black belt in karate, has also incorporated various other forms of martial arts into his screen persona over the past 20 years, including Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Muay Thai, and Wing Chun Kung-Fu. Statham’s evident dedication to the study of martial arts has translated to increasingly elaborate and impressive fight scenes. His extensive martial arts background has enabled his fighting characters to seem especially authentic, even in the most outrageous action sequences, given that he performs many of his own stunts.
Moreover, as Statham has always presented himself as a lifelong student of martial arts, not a karate master like Chuck Norris, this sense of humility, combined with the wide variety of martial arts techniques that Statham has displayed in his films, has endeared him to audiences by making him seem more relatable than other one-man-army action heroes, even in the most unbelievable of circumstances.
While Statham has demonstrated a wide variety of martial arts techniques in his films, his action-hero persona is most clearly defined by how his characters use any available tool at their disposal to survive. Whether this involves unleashing a flurry of kicks and punches against a group of thugs during a gas station fight scene in the 2013 action thriller film Homefront or cutting open the stomach of a giant shark with a submersible propeller in the 2018 action film The Meg.
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The Transporter Features Statham’s Best Fight Scene
While Jason Statham has performed many impressive fight sequences throughout his career, the bus station garage fight scene in The Transporter has taken on legendary status within his filmography, in which the eight-minute scene serves as the most impressive display of the wide assortment of Statham’s skills as an actor and martial artist.
The scene begins with Statham’s character, Frank Martin, lying on the roof of a bus, as the bus enters said garage, where he finds himself immediately confronted from various angles by a group of armed thugs. After initially being trapped within two buses, the outnumbered Frank uses the contained environment to his advantage by first boarding one of the buses. There, he delivers various kicks and punches to several of his pursuers, who are unable to overwhelm Frank in unison due to the constraints of the bus’s cramped interior.
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After departing the bus, Frank gains an advantage over the remaining thugs by spilling oil from a container onto the garage floor, thus causing his enemies to slip. Meanwhile, he covers himself in oil to make him slippery to the faceless henchmen. While his opponents struggle to gain their footing, Frank straps bicycle pedals to his feet, thus enabling him to stand and then kick his opponents amid the oil spill.
The scene is most impressive because of the creativity and intelligence that Statham projects throughout the scene, in which Frank’s ability to navigate this challenging situation relies on his ability to continually adapt to shifting environmental conditions in the course of outsmarting his opponents, instead of merely beating them into submission.
Statham’s Martial Arts Training Has Transformed His Screen Persona
Just as the fluidity and grace that Jason Statham displayed in his diving career translated seamlessly to his acting career, the efficiency and precision that Statham brings to his fight scenes and martial arts training is perfectly complimented by Statham’s generally calm, disciplined screen persona, in which Statham’s trademark dry humor serves as an effective counterpoint to sudden bursts of violence.
Moreover, just as Statham’s first feature starring vehicle, The Transporter, resembles a Hong Kong action movie, The Transporter also showcases Statham’s proficiency in John Woo-style Gun-Fu combat, in addition to his impressive martial arts skills. While the Hong Kong influence has been virtually absent from Statham’s subsequent career outside the Transporter franchise, save for Statham’s appearances opposite Jet Li in the films The One and War, The Transporter showed that Statham is a natural fit for the genre.