Title: Redemption

Director: Steven Knight

Starring: Jason Statham, Agata Buzek, Vicky McClure, Benedict Wong, Ger Ryan, Dani Bradley.

Joey is a British Special Forces soldier who has returned to London after a traumatic tour of duty in Afghanistan. As he attempts to redeem his past, he assumes another man’s identity and meets Sister Cristina, a young nun who works in an inner city parish. During his journey back to a “normal life” he will be torn between his call for the criminal underworld and the pursuit of rehabilitating himself.

It’s refreshing to see the global action actor, Jason Statham, taking a role in something that’s not just a variation of the same fast-driving, taciturn, semi-romantic bruiser, we’re accustomed to seeing on screen. Just as daring is to make his romantic object of interest the pointy Polish beauty Agata Buzek, playing a woman who tackles between the piety imposed by her duty as nun, and the more feminine Florence Nightingale Syndrome.

‘Redemption’ marks the directorial debut of the Oscar nominated screenwriter Steven Knight, who proves to have great technical skills behind the camera, but this time seems to have grown lazy with his writing. The plot is a mixture of hackneyed commonplace action. Nevertheless the remarkable cinematography by the two time Academy Award-winning director of photography Chris Menges boosts the aesthetics of the movie.

Technical: B+

Acting: B

Story: C

Overall: B-

Written by: Chiara Spagnoli Gabardi

Redemption Jason Statham

By Chiara Spagnoli Gabardi

Chiara Spagnoli Gabardi, is a film critic, culture and foreign affairs reporter, screenwriter, film-maker and visual artist. She studied in a British school in Milan, graduated in Political Sciences, got her Masters in screenwriting and film production and studied at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York and Los Angeles. Chiara’s “Material Puns” use wordplay to weld the title of the painting with the materials placed on canvas, through an ironic reinterpretation of Pop-Art, Dadaism and Ready Made. She exhibited her artwork in Milan, Rome, Venice, London, Oxford, Paris and Manhattan. Chiara works as a reporter for online, print, radio and television and also as a film festival PR/publicist. As a bi-lingual journalist (English and Italian), who is also fluent in French and Spanish, she is a member of the Foreign Press Association in New York, the Women Film Critics Circle in New York, the Italian Association of Journalists in Milan and the Federation of Film Critics of Europe and the Mediterranean. Chiara is also a Professor of Phenomenology of Contemporary Arts at IED University in Milan.

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