Homefront is a 2013 action thriller directed by Gary Fleder, written by Sylvester Stallone, and adapted from the novel by crime writer Chuck Logan. Jason Statham plays Phil Broker, a former DEA agent who moves to small-town Louisiana with his daughter and ends up in a war with a local meth operation, with James Franco as Gator, alongside Winona Ryder, Kate Bosworth, Frank Grillo, Clancy Brown and Izabela Vidovic as Broker’s daughter.

The first thing worth knowing is why this film exists at all, because the answer is better than the film’s marketing ever suggested. Sylvester Stallone adapted Chuck Logan’s novel himself, with the intention of playing Broker. The project then stalled and was shelved entirely. It only came back to life because Stallone and Jason Statham got talking about it during one of the Expendables shoots, at which point Stallone handed the role over and stayed on as producer. It is also, notably, the first screenplay Stallone ever wrote that he did not go on to act in.

Now, the main argument, which I will make properly. Jason Statham will go down as one of the greatest action stars we have ever had. None of his films will ever be regarded as masterpieces, and I want to be clear that I think that is entirely beside the point. They are in a class of their own. They are fun, they are exciting, and they are exactly what they present themselves as being, with no pretence and no apology. What more is anybody actually asking for.

I am also not alone in that position. One reviewer of this film wrote that if you can arrive at the understanding that you are getting a Statham action flick, nothing more and nothing less, you will ease up enough to have a good time. Another described the film as hilariously stupid garbage that will delight Statham fans and annoy everybody else, which I would argue is simply a description of the job being done correctly.

I genuinely think everybody in this cast did well. The ensemble is far deeper than this sort of film normally gets, with Winona Ryder, Kate Bosworth, Frank Grillo and Clancy Brown all turning up, and reviewers at the time noted that several of them were arguably too good for the material. Izabela Vidovic as Broker’s daughter was also singled out by more than one critic, and the father-daughter relationship is handled with more care than the genre usually bothers with. Roger Ebert’s site observed that Fleder draws a moving and believable relationship out of what is, on paper, a widower-dad cliché.

The action set pieces are put together properly, too. Statham is an accomplished fighter and stuntman and those skills are well used throughout.