“Homefront,” a movie we had no idea even existed until literally fifteen minutes ago, sounds kind of enjoyable in a junky, nothing-else-is-playing kind of way. It stars Jason Statham, king of B-grade action movies, as a former DEA agent who returns to his home down only to get hassled by a drug kingpin named gator (James Franco, of course). And if all of that wasn’t enough to get your tough guy appreciation levels up, the movie was written by none other than Sylvester Stallone, whose script is based on a novel by Chuck Hogan (“The Town“). And now the first photos from the November release have debuted courtesy of USA Today. Testosterone-y!
According to the USA Today report, Winona Ryder also plays one of the “local thugs” in Franco’s orbit. “Looking at it with the paradigm of the Western, (Franco) is the guy with the black hat on. Even the sheriff doesn’t want to mess with him,” director Gary Fleder (“Things to Do In Denver When You’re Dead“) told the paper. Fleder, sadly, doesn’t make mention of the fact that Franco seems to be cornering the market on ludicrously named villains this year, between his character Alien from “Spring Breakers” and now Gator (those aren’t even proper nouns!)
Statham agrees that Franco’s, er, idiosyncratic approach helped the character. “He brought an interesting slice to the bad guy role,” Jason Statham told USA Today. “He’s a great actor and didn’t go down the usual path of being a ‘scary’ villain. He has the ability to bring out the quirkiness and eerie side to this character.” In other words: he weirded it up in typical Franco fashion. We can’t wait.
The movie, which also stars a galaxy of B-movie greats like Kate Bosworth, Vincent D’Onofrio, Mischa Barton, Frank Grillo and Clancy Brown, opens on November 27th. Bring someone who you’re comfortable with physically assaulting afterwards.
