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The Fighter
The Transporter A former diver for the British national squad, Statham's agility and love of martial arts means that he's a genuinely lithe, genuinely agile proposition in fight scenes, something Luc Besson recognised when casting him as Frank Martin, the taciturn driver and closet badass, in the Transporter films. Take this scene, for example, when Martin - on the trail of something or other - we can't remember and don't really care, and neither should you - is confronted by a group of bad guys in a bus depot. Removing his jumper, which he then uses as a prop, Martin slicks himself down with oil, and uses two loose bicycle pedals to anchor himself while the bad guys slip and slide around. Needless to say, he beats the living shit out of them in an impressive action sequence that has the best excuse we've ever seen to cover its leading man in goo.
 The Lover
Crank
Chev Chelios, who already wins points for having one of the most ludicrous tough guy names of all time, has a problem: he's been poisoned with a substance that means he has to keep his adrenaline running dangerously high, or he'll die. So, displaying ingenuity that would put Blue Peter presenters to shame, Chev decides to have it off with his girlfriend, Amy Smart. In broad daylight. In public. Where most people would be arrested, Chev is instead egged on by a crowd of approximately 250 onlookers in this utterly barmy scene from Neveldine/Taylor's nutjob actioner. And no small wonder: for, as Chev raises his arms to, erm, milk the acclaim, while yelling "I'm alive! I'm alive!", you have to hand it to the man. As Alan Partridge might say, that's world-class.
 The Villain
Cellular
Our Jase hasn't always been on the side of the angels. In David R. Ellis' enjoyable B-movie, he's actually the main bad guy - a corrupt cop, snarling and spitting lines of dialogue in an American accent that represents The Stath's best stab at the one foe to so far defeat him. Statham exudes a quiet and lethal menace in the various scenes where he has to terrorise Kim Basinger's captive housewife, including uttering dark threats about her husband and son. The rotter. Sadly, The Stath finds his cellular reception permanently reduced to no bars by William H. Macy, which would never, ever, ever happen.
 The Cameo
Collateral
Now here's a version of Michael Mann's Collateral that, try as we might, we just can't picture: The Stath as Max, the cab driver with a heart of gold, opposite Tom Cruise as cold-blooded assassin, Vincent, who cajoles and threatens and terrorises Max over the course of one night, turning him into a real man. The reason we can't picture it is, of course, that The Stath could kill Cruise with one well-timed look, but that didn't stop Statham from auditioning for the role. Mann was impressed - not enough to give The Stath the role, but enough to give him this consolation cameo in the opening minutes, as the bag man who exchanges briefcases with Cruise in LAX, thus giving him his orders. Notice how Statham doesn't look at Cruise - not just so they won't arouse suspicion, but because he knows that he could kill him with a glance. And then the movie's over before it's already begun. Such is the power of The Stath. Now, are we alone in wanting to see a movie about Airport Man? Hell, R.E.M. already made a song about him...
 The Driver
Death Race In the Transporter flicks, The Stath shows moves that would make Lewis Hamilton sick to his helmet. Yet, when it comes to his driving moment, we've plumped for Paul W.S. Anderson's Death Race. Why? Because it's utterly brutal, fast and stylish - oh, and The Stath drives a souped-up Ford Mustang augmented with guns. Lots of guns. Which he deploys ably in the movie's best stunt - while leading one of the Death Races, wrongfully imprisoned ace racer Jensen Ames decides to get revenge on the arsehole who bumped off his wife. So, without batting an eyelid, he throws the car into a 180-degree handbrake turn, sparks up the cannons, and unleashes hell at his rival while driving backwards at dizzying speed. OK, he loses points for failing to signal before attempting a risky manoeuvre, but we're damned if we're not going to try this the next time we need to do a turn in the road. Without the guns, obviously.
 The Oscar
Revolver
The Stath has had problems being taken seriously as an actor - a price you probably have to pay when making movies like In The Name Of The King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (which will not be appearing on this list). But he's also a capable thesp who needn't be condemned by sniggering preconceptions about his abilities, or lack thereof. He'll never win an Oscar - although he might take one by force - but for evidence that the man can act, check out Guy Ritchie's wilfully dense and critically derided mindfuck, in which Statham plays a con artist who comes to realise that his biggest enemy is not his pretty iffy wig, but instead his ego. Rise above your ego, and you become master of your own domain. The scene where Statham's Jake realises this is a pretty effective Lynchian montage in an elevator, with Ritchie cutting between Jake in various states - confused, distraught, ranting - while bombarding us with fragments of voice-over. Although the film is much-maligned, The Stath has never been better.
 The Smoothie
The Italian Job
He can beat most people so precisely that Tropicana took their 'Lots Of Pulp/Some Pulp/No Pulp' formula from him, but The Stath has always been something of a ladies' man in real life. Any man who stepped out with the gorgeous Kelly Brook has something going for him (in this respect, this is why you should also listen to your friend, Billy Zane), but it's an aspect that has remained largely untapped in movies. F. Gary Gray's The Italian Job manages it, though, casting The Stath as a smoothie called Handsome Rob who, as well as being another ace driver, could charm the pants off the birds themselves. Best scene? When Handsome Rob puts the moves on a girl named Becky, complete with comedic commentary on his actions from Seth Green, bravely mocking The Stath's accent. It's a wonder that Green can still walk.
 The Wheeler-Dealer
Snatch
Although it was Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels that gave The Stath his big break, for the life of us we can't recall a standout scene for his character, Bacon. So we turn to Guy Ritchie's second film as the one that really propelled Statham to stardom. After all, while Brad Pitt, Benicio Del Toro, Vinnie Jones and Dennis Farina have the flashier roles, it's Statham - clad in a full-length brown coat that makes him look like a gangster-cum-shop assistant - who anchors the film as wide boy/slightly shady entrepreneur Turkish, with his constant references to 'ze Germans', deadpan narration and implacable approach to life, no matter how bad things may seem. Best scene: the moment when Turkish, ever the wheeler-dealer, gets out- wrangled by Pitt's pikey fighter, Mickey… and all over a caravan for his mam.
The Criminal Mastermind
Chaos Spoiler warning! If you haven't seen this unremarkable cop thriller, then a) go and see it! and b) Statham, for so long the movie's maverick hero, turns out to be the mastermind behind a heist so fiendishly clever that even his partner Wesley Snipes, whose record in financial matters isn't exactly gleaming, can't balls it up. The movie ends with a long scene in an airport where good cop Ryan Philippe, who's kinda figured it out, tries to find Statham, while The Stath - who we thought was dead - has an attack of the Rowlings and explains the entire plot to him, before walking off into the sunset with a ton of cash, a fake identity and the worst disguise in the world, a simple hat, that nevertheless manages to make The Stath blend in, disappear, like a cut-price Keyser Soze.
The Comedian
Transporter 2 So many scenes to choose from when it comes to Louis Leterrier's enormously enjoyable Transporter 2. There's the fight where The Stath takes out about a dozen burly men with his big hose - fnar, fnar. There's the bit where Frank Martin removes a bomb that's attached to the underside of his car by driving up a ramp, spinning upside down and hooking it to a crane, in mid-air, just before it explodes. But we're going to go for a dialogue scene. The genius of the first two Transporter movies was an inability to take themselves too seriously. And at the heart of it all was The Stath, masterfully delivering ludicrous dialogue with a straight face. And nowhere does that dialogue get better than in the scene where Frank has to tell Amber Valletta's Audrey that her son, Jack, has been infected by a deadly virus. "Audrey," says Frank, with the grave air of a man treating the school play like it's Hamlet. "Jack's been infected by a deadly virus." Not one to mince words, is our Frank.
The Perceptive One
Ghosts Of Mars One of the few people to escape from John Carpenter's godawful mish-mash of sci-fi, horror, Western and Christ knows what else, Statham is the no-nonsense Sgt. Jericho Butler (until Chev Chelios, Statham's coolest character name), a handy guy to have in a fight - at least until he's decapitated by a bit of flying debris near the end. But, more so than his prowess with guns, Jericho makes the list because he's perceptive and not one to state the bleedin' obvious. Well, OK, he is. For example: creeping over the brow of a hill, Jericho spies a group of Martian loons chanting and screaming and burning sacrificial pyres. Oh, and they've stuck the disembodied heads of his friends on spikes. "Captain," says Jericho, in a statement worthy of winning the No Shit, Sherlock prize ten years running. "We've got a situation here." Can't pull the wool over that man's eyes.
The Incomprehensible
Mean Machine The Stath showed up in this actually-pretty-enjoyable, football-based, Vinnie Jones-led remake of the Burt Reynolds prison sports movie, The Longest Yard (with real football, not the American kind), as a favour to Lock Stock and Snatch producer Matthew Vaughn. And his cameo, as mad Scottish goalkeeper Monk (who killed 23 men with his bare hands), is an absolute hoot, from an incomprehensible accent that's as wonky as a shanked drive down a St. Andrew fairway, to goalkeeping skills that might look good for the cameras, but would actually be bugger all use in a real match. Have something else to add? Feel free to do so! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ UPDATE: December 28, 2008 As suggested below, here is yet another Statham - The Stripper. I don't think the description is nessesary. 
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