Jason Statham has been in countless wild action movies, but not all of them have gotten as much recognition as they deserve. Statham’s rise as an action hero commenced in the early 21st century, with Statham breaking out in The Transporter series and the Crank movies. Eventually, Jason Statham became a key player in ensemble action films like The Expendables franchise and the Fast and Furious movies, along with fighting giant sharks in The Meg films. With Statham’s combination of outstanding martial arts skills, an unmistakable cockney accent, and all-around rugged tough guy image, he’s as consistently engaging a screen presence as any modern action hero.

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Of course, many action stars haven’t always had their entire body of work fully appreciated in its time. The same is the case with Jason Statham, with many of his action films being immediate hits, and some others slipping through the cracks only to be rediscovered years later. Here are Jason Statham’s three most underappreciated action movies.

War (2007)

Jason Statham’s second action movie double-header with Jet Li after their sci-fi multiverse movie The One, War (2007) is a dark dive into vengeance and the criminal underworld. After the murder of his partner Tom Lone (Terry Chen) and his family, FBI Agent John Crawford vows revenge on their killer, a mysterious assassin known only as Rogue (Jet Li). Helmed by Phillip G. Atwell in his feature directorial debut, War built up massive pre-release hype as a showdown between two of the world’s biggest action heroes, the poster even putting Li and Statham in a brooding stare down with the tagline “One wants justice. The other wants revenge.” Sadly, War landed with a thud in 2007, with Li in particular being vocally unhappy with the film. However, War has aged shockingly well since 2007.

Part ’70s-style crime caper, part revenge thriller, part Hong Kong action movie, War takes the audience down a rabbit hole of a boiling war of the Triad and Yakuza in San Francisco, Crawford’s vendetta with Rogue, and Rogue’s own veiled motivations that seem to align with neither criminal empire. The shocking twist of War is also one worthy of The Sixth Sense in how much it reshapes virtually the entire movie, including the roles of both Lone and Rogue. Li and Statham’s chemistry as adversaries is also as engaging as their alliances in The One and The Expendables franchise, with War also delivering no shortage of the stunts and martial arts action Li and Statham are renowned for. Truly no action movie in Jason Statham’s filmography can claim to be underrated with as much justification as War can.

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Death Race (2008)

Roger Corman’s 1975 carsploitation B-movie Death Race 2000 got a modernized update from Mortal Kombat director Paul W.S. Anderson in 2008, and brings all the patented Jason Statham greatness to the table. Set in Earth’s dystopian future, Death Race sees Statham as Jensen Ames, a steel mill worker wrongly convicted of murdering his wife, who gets a shot at freedom by partaking in the high stakes, televised car races of Terminal Island Prison. The race’s previous champion, a masked racer known only as “Frankenstein”, was killed some time ago. All Jensen has to do is pose as Frankenstein to drive up the ratings of the races at the behest of prison warden Hennessey (Joan Allen), but of course, escaping the diabolical warden’s compound won’t be so simple.

Death Race is both Paul W.S. Anderson and Jason Statham at their best, the former a video game-inclined filmmaker who gives the Corman cult-classic an intense heavy metal makeover, the latter bringing his grizzled cockney chops to Jensen’s hardened personality and impenetrable toughness. The action scenes of Death Race are like a post-apocalyptic spin on the the Fast and Furious movies, complete with Tyrese Gibson on-board as Jensen’s fellow racer Machine Gun Joe (though neither he nor Jensen hold a candle to Hennessy in the profanity department, the warden dropping a five hundred megaton F-bomb in Death Race‘s third act.) Death Race went on to spawn three direct-to-video sequels, sans Statham or Anderson, but Statham’s reliable tough guy performance and the movie’s plentiful car stunts and action make Death Race an overlooked Statham action movie deserving of being revisited.

Homefront (2013)

Jason Statham’s work with Sylvester Stallone has not strictly been in The Expendables franchise, with Stallone scripting two Statham vehicles, beginning with 2013’s Homefront (the other being David Ayer’s 2025 Statham action movie A Working Man.) In Homefront, Statham portrays retired DEA agent Phil Broker, a man trying to keep a low profile in a quiet Louisiana town while raising his daughter Maddy (Izabela Vidovic). His efforts to fly under the radar go awry after Maddy defends herself from a school bully, provoking the anger of his parents and leading his mother Cassie (Kate Bosworth) to call upon the assistance of her drug dealer brother Gator (James Franco). Eventually, Gator has his own vendetta with Phil when he learns of his role in the imprisonment of his old business partner.

Homefront is one of Statham’s smaller scale actioners, with Phil being an atypical Statham protagonist with his proclivity for a path of least resistance philosophy to conflict until the situation makes that impossible. Statham’s relatively understated performance also contrasts Phil as a man of peace with the far more violence-prone Cassie and other residents of the town, but while Homefront keeps its Statham action somewhat on the backburner, it nevertheless delivers on it in spades when the time comes for Phil to take the gloves off as Gator’s plot unfolds. Homefront is the rare Jason Statham action movie where he plays a thoroughly capable and trained protagonist who would like nothing more than to live a pacifist life, and Statham fans would do well to revisit it for that novelty along with the pay off when Statham’s Phil finally decides it’s No More Mr. Nice Guy time.

Jason Statham’s next action movie, A Working Man, will be released in theaters on March 28th, 2025.