Kyle Smith

Kyle Smith

Movies

James Franco takes meth-od acting to the bayou

Pardon me, “Homefront,” but I’m having a little trouble finding James Franco, as a bayou meth lord, to be much of a match for Jason Statham, as an ex-DEA agent hiding out anonymously with his daughter.

Despite being named “Gator Bodine,” Franco seems like something Statham would scrape off his boots. Put it this way: Franco needs a baseball bat to be intimidating; Statham just needs to be Statham.

This serviceable but wheezingly familiar action thriller, written by Sylvester Stallone (who doesn’t appear in it), plays like a variant of the stranger-in-Hicktown classic “Straw Dogs.” But, error: This time, instead of a nerdy mathematician defending the homestead, he’s a supercop: Statham’s character, Broker, can do more damage butting heads than the yokels who jump him can do with a rebar baton. Like I said: Not a fair fight.

Broker is trying to live quietly under a new identity in a bayou town after infiltrating a meth-dealing biker gang whose chief goes to prison after his son gets killed in a shootout. After his daughter gets bullied but kicks ass in a schoolyard scrap, the bully’s drug-addled mother (Kate Bosworth, who was on the other side of the equation in the “Straw Dogs” remake) turns to her brother (Franco) for revenge.

Thanks to some snooping around Broker’s house, Franco’s Gator discovers he can use his meth-ho girlfriend (Winona Ryder, who gets bent over a Mustang and says “F - - k!” a lot) to make a deal with members of the same drug gang Broker put in prison. They get Broker’s address, Gator gets statewide meth-dealing rights.

It isn’t overly surprising that the mysteriously fit stranger with the British accent is no ordinary carpenter: “You walk like a cop,” one of the thugs tells Broker before he and his buddies get broker and broker.

Since there’s not a whole lot of doubt where we’re going with all this, the (limited) pleasure is in watching Statham open a case of whoop-ass and invite all those uninvited guests to have a taste.

Really, bad dudes: Why would you put plastic handcuffs on this man? Those are for adorable Oberlin students at a militant-vegan march, not for a human thunderbolt like Statham. Gator, on the phone from a bar where he is keeping tabs on the ambush, asks his girlfriend, “Whaddya mean, s - - t’s gone wrong?” Well, Gator, next time you plan an assassination, maybe go along with the angry meth gang just to make sure everything works out OK.