The growing belief that video on demand represents the future of commercial film distribution got a blockbuster boost this month from no less a pair of cinematic clairvoyants than George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.
Speaking during a panel discussion at the University of Southern California, the makers of "Jaws" and "Star Wars" predicted the apocalyptic leveling of multiplexes alongside a house-by-house revolution in what Lucas called "Internet television."
"There'll be [fewer] movies on a big screen," declared Lucas. "Everything else will be on a small screen. It's almost that way now."
One could say it's easy for a player who cashed in his chips to announce that the game is up. (Last fall Lucas sold his Lucasfilm empire to Disney for $4 billion.) Still, some of the bets being placed by movie card-sharks of more modest means suggest that, as the overproduced likes of "Man of Steel" and "After Earth" underwhelm, even the summer action-film genre that Lucas and Spielberg pioneered is being dealt differently now.
Touting tough guy Jason Statham, whose "Parker" recently topped VOD charts, the mini-studio Roadside Attractions this week released the British star's "Redemption" to a limited number of U.S. theaters and, simultaneously, to iTunes, Xbox Video and Amazon on Demand.
Known abroad as "Hummingbird," "Redemption" won't likely redeem Hollywood; it's more notable in business terms than artistic ones. Nevertheless, this heat-packing pic's unusual emphasis on characterization — Statham plays an ex-Special Forces soldier on the dole in London — does bear out one of the more creative propositions embedded in the Lucas/Spielberg proclamation. That is: Smaller films, including those released to VOD, can afford to take bigger risks — and "Redemption" does indeed take a few, at least by the standards of summer movie diversion.
Alcoholic and homeless, suffering post-traumatic stress while relying on occasional thievery for clothes and cash, Statham's bleary-eyed Joey Jones is among the most startlingly miserable of recent genre-film protagonists. Yet, like "Redemption" itself, he aspires to up-from-rock-bottom greatness, doing what he can — in between fistfights, of course — to help the downtrodden mother of his kid, as well as a nun for whom he has the hots.
Directed by Steven Knight, who scripted "Eastern Promises" for David Cronenberg, and vividly shot in widescreen by Chris Menges ("North Country"), "Redemption" is a B-movie by circumstance — scrounging, as any enterprising pulp thriller will, for industry juice.
