You can be a dedicated raw-food-vegan workout fiend and still give in to cravings that involve a bucket of deep-fried onion rings and Kirin lager by the tank. At this point, that's probably what Jason Statham is to the global film industry: a bad, illogical, artery-hardening craving.

Among all the manicured, dyed and well-behaved crop of A-list performers, among the CGI effects that have rendered real physical action more or less obsolete and the ho-hum story lines that almost always include some lame subplot about the importance of family, Statham surfaces like some Paleolithic sea creature, and then catapults right into your face, smothering you with salty goo.

"Blitz" shows up Statham in all his fried oniony glory. At one point in the movie, he growls: "Do I look like the kind of guy who carries a pencil?" before downing a pint in one quick guzzle. The truth is, he looks like the kind of guy who has never seen a pencil in his life, and who hasn't made eye contact with his bath towel in a couple weeks either.