Death-Defying Stunts In Jason Statham’s Movies

On the screen, he embodies the tough, gritty and skilled action hero. His athleticism, fighting skills and no-nonsense attitude make him believable and exciting in action sequences. No wonder several of his films have been major box office hits, starting with his debut in the Guy Ritchie film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998). In fact, his films have grossed over USD 1.5 billion to date, not only proving his commercial appeal but also solidifying his status as a bankable action star. Given his stature and voice for stunt work, it won’t come as a surprise that he did the stunts in his latest film, The Beekeeper.

In fact, he also learned bee-keeping to get into the skin of his character, Adam Clay, who is a beekeeper in the film. He reportedly didn’t get stung even once during filming. “He does his own stunts, he’s an athlete. He has so much action history, so much physical ability, and an understanding of how to make it look good on camera. I’ve done a lot of action, but he took me to school. But off duty, Jason is a nice, normal, down-to-earth dude,” David Ayer, the director of The Beekeeper, told Variety about Statham’s work.

The Italian Job (2003)

The remake stars Jason Statham, as well as Mark Wahlberg, Charlize Theron, Edward Norton, Seth Green, Mos Def and Donald Sutherland. Statham plays the crew’s helmsman, Handsome Rob. As expected of him, the English actor performed many of his stunts on his own. His most significant stunt work was in The Italian Job? The famous boat chase in Venice. F. Gary Gray, the film’s director, said in an interview that he did not want to rely on CGI or visual effects. Statham piloted the boat on which his character escapes. “You see both of our faces in the boats because he really drives it,” Green, who plays Lyle, said in an interview, adding that Statham was “sawing at 45 miles an hour.”

Statham said he doesn’t have much boating experience. “It’s a lot more difficult than it seems. You really need to have some understanding of what speed you’re driving, what arc you’re driving, what kind of drift you’re driving,” he said. The actor emphasized that the stunt was very difficult when the boat entered narrow channels, and low-hanging bridges passed almost centimeters above the heads of the operators on the boat.

Transporter 2 (2005)

Of all the dangerous stunts Jason Statham has pulled off in his films, the closest he believes to getting fatal was in Transporter 2. The action scenes in Transporter 2 are truly amazing, but there is one that tops them all. This is an action scene in the film where his character, Frank Martin, jumps from a jet ski into the back of a bus. One mistake and Statham could have ended up in a coma because there were no safety lines – a risk he says he shouldn’t have taken.

“I jumped a little bit on Transporter 2 or from a jet ski to the back of a bus. It wasn’t a very safe trick. I shouldn’t have done it, there was no safety wire, but I just did it. I mean, if I had missed the back of the bus, it would have been hitting the concrete at 30 mph. Just stupid things I did,” the actor told Collider.

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Crank (2006)

In one of the deadliest stunts ever pulled off by an actor in a movie, Jason Statham dangled from a helicopter more than 900 meters above Los Angeles as his character traded blows with the villain, played by Jose Pablo Cantillo. It’s a crazy scene, made even crazier when it’s known that the entire helicopter sequence was performed by the actor himself, not a stunt double. “A lot of the things we do now—with The Expendables—any time you’re in a helicopter, it’s usually on a green screen. But with Crank we were actually in a helicopter. We’re filming a fight scene where I’m standing on the skids and we have a little pickaxe there. So it was quite a stunt, you know, it was quite difficult,” Statham added.

The Expendables 3 (2014)

In The Expendables 3, Jason Statham (Christmas, Barney) and the rest of the team pursue Mel Gibson’s character, arms dealer Conrad Stonebanks. One of the action-packed scenes from the film features Terry Crews’ character, Caesar, who comes to the aid of Barney and the rest of the team as they fight Conrad and his men. In this episode, Statham drove a truck to ensure the safety of his team. A faulty truck’s brakes caused it to fall off the pier where the scene was being filmed and into the sea. Statham could have drowned, but his deft swimming and survival skills helped him crawl out of the truck window and escape before it sank.

Mechanic: Resurrection (2016)

The poster for Mechanica: Resurrection shows Statham climbing a high-rise building with a pistol in his hand. Statham performed the stunt in the film. It is in this sequence that he destroys his target while he is swimming in a glass-bottomed pool protruding from the top floor of a building.

“I think you need to get used to the altitude. You know, I’m not used to certain types of heights. But I don’t really get sort of a vertigo feeling,” Statham told when asked to comment about the scene.

The Meg (2018)

Jason Statham didn’t actually battle a gigantic shark in The Meg. But, yes, some of the sequences in the water were real. And they were tough. In an interview on Hollywood Outbreak, the actor said that he had to hang on to a structure resembling the shark’s head that the production team created, which was then rapidly moved about underwater. “They pull it this way and they put it on a pulley that way. And it’s underwater so there’s so much resistance you know it can’t just be…it’s very hard to explain…if you’ve ever tried to be pulled at great speed underwater, everything wants to go on way but the body just resists against the mass of the water,” he said.

“It’s really tough to do to be thrashed around on [sic.]water is an impossible thing,” added Statham, underlining the difficulty of filming a key sequence in the film.

Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019)

“Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw” is the first spin-off of the “Fast and Furious” franchise. The film takes place after the events of The Fate of the Furious (2017), the eighth installment in the series, and revolves around the characters played by Jason Statham and Dwayne Johnson in the main franchise. The action-packed action film, directed by David Leitch, features a variety of death-defying stunts, some of which are performed by Jason Statham. Statham’s most significant stunt sequence is the warehouse chase in Ukraine. “That’s Jason driving,” Leitch said, according to the New York Post. “Because he’s so good, we felt comfortable putting him in that position.”

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The Expendables 4 (2023)

Much of The Expendables 4 is CGI, which is obvious to anyone who watches the films with a keen eye. But there are also original episodes. One of them is a motorcycle chase scene inside a cargo ship. Although the film was shot mostly on Statham, the coolest part of the stunt was performed by Australian bicycle stuntman and X Games gold medalist Robbie Maddison. However, Statham had to pull off one more major stunt on his own – and it was as dangerous as any of the others, as he had to go toe-to-toe with Indonesian action icon and martial arts expert Iko Uwais.

In fact, the film’s director, Scott Waugh, said the fight scene between the two was his favorite. “There are two great martial arts actors in cinema right now,” Waugh told Gamespot. “Obviously Iko from The Raid.” Everyone knows what a bastard this guy is. And put them together and let these two just do it without stunt doubles and come up with an amazing fight. You know, it’s four and a half minutes long. It was amazing for me and I think it ends in an Expendables style.

Meg 2: The Trench (2023)

Jason Statham is reprising his role in the Meg sequel, and according to director Ben Wheatley, wherever audiences see him doing stunts, “it’s almost all him.” “Because the physics of a face are hard to simulate—to really look upside down, you have to be upside down—we had Jason on this giant hand drill, and we pulled the trigger and spun him around, throwing water on his face,” Wheatley said.

“He wanted as few gimbal shots as possible, almost all of him – obviously not jumping on a giant wave, but riding a jet ski very, very fast.

And the worst thing is, we all stood at the monitors and said: “Please come back!” added the director. According to some reports, Statham even swam with real sharks to study their behavior. Filming took place mainly in Thailand, where huge tanks about 18 meters wide and 5 meters deep were installed for the water scenes. Of course, CGI played a major role, but Statham is present in almost every water scene in the film, including the ones where he is seen riding a jet ski at high speed.