While it looks like we’ll be waiting in vain for his review of The Raven, Armond White, our favorite thesaurificant cantankeramous of the venerable Bull Moose Moving Picture Appreciation Society of the 1936 World Fair, did review Safe, the film about Jason Statham protecting a small Asian girl by punching everyone in the face. Good old Armond, he never fails to entertain. This was my favorite line:
Statham always deserves commendation for his usually fine taste in projects, such as Paul W.S. Anderson’s Death Race (the film that does the social commentary The Hunger Games can’t).
My God, that sentence is just so perfectly Armond. It’s not that it’s contrarian, it’s that it’s so dense with contrarianisms. It’s got assertions that could take up three other essays on their own, just breezily tossed in there off hand where only tangentially relevant. I haven’t seen Death Race, and while it looks super crappy to me, I know it has its fans (Burnsy, for one), and I’m perfectly willing to entertain the notion that it’s a better version of The Hunger Games. But then you’re like, wait, Jason Statham has fine taste in projects? You mean the Jason Statham from projects like… Killer Elite and Blitz and The Mechanic and The Expendables and The Transporterer Part 6: The Transportering? That Jason Statham? Also, why does he ALWAYS deserve commendation for taste that’s only USUALLY fine? With a lesser writer I’d call that a grammar mistake, but with Armond I’m 95% sure it was intentional. It’s just part of his relentless barrage of challenges to the conventional wisdom. OH I’M SORRY BITCH, WERE YOU NOT AWARE EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT THE WORLD IS WRONG?? AIN’T NO SHELTER FROM TRUTH BOMBS LIKE THESE! A-DUBZ OUT!
I love Armond White. He is ten times more entertaining than any film he’s ever covered.
Oi, littew girl, come wiv me if you want ta live, innit.