That was an excellent one.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

The story is real, touching, the actors play extremely well. Jason Statham is usually an action hero, but in this film he shows that he is very good in different roles. I wish I would see him more in similar films. Agata Buzek is surprisingly good actress. I haven't seen her in other movies, but she deserves to be seen more. I watch this film many times. One of the best.

Joey Smith has gone AWOL from his Special Forces unit and is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder because of things he saw and did in Afghanistan. He is living rough on the streets of London until one day a group of thugs attack him and fellow homeless people. He flees and ends up in an empty apartment; he soon learns that the owner in out of the country and won't be back for several months so decides to stay there. Soon afterwards he learns that his friend Isabel has gone missing and determines to find what has happened to her. He gets work with Chinese gangsters and earns lots of money; he doesn't forget his friends in the homeless community or his only real friend; a nun named Cristina. Cristina tells Joey that somebody she knows in the police has told her about a prostitute found dead in the river; photographs confirm that it is Isabel; Joey is determined to do what it takes to find the man responsible; even if he has to do some reprehensible things in the process.Jason Statham is great when he plays tough guys or drives around in fast cars but I wasn't sure if he'd be any good in more nuanced roles. This film shows that he can in fact handle more emotional roles too. He does a fine job as Joey; especially during the scenes where we see him dealing with his inner demons. That said fans hoping to see him dish out some summary justice to various unpleasant characters get a few such scenes which are as impressive as one might expect. Agata Buzek provides fine support as Joey's conflicted friend Sister Cristina; there is a good chemistry between her and Statham. While the film is fairly downbeat there are some genuinely funny moments; the best being when the neighbour, who thinks Joey is gay, ask if he ever fancies women and he replies that lately he has been having thoughts about nuns! Overall I'd say this is a pretty good film; there is a solid, well-acted story and some solid action; it was nice to see Statham playing a character that was more than just a hard man in a car.

You know why I am giving this film one star? Because the creators of this film, in true Hollywood fashion, just can't help but show us yet another nun have a sexual affair. After Christina and Joey kiss, I thought the filmmakers might actually do something different, you know, like respect Christianity and show the characters come to their senses. But of course not, how silly of me. True devotion to Christ cannot ever, EVER, be shown in a Hollywood film. Sister Christina *of course* has to have a background of sexual abuse, because no one would ever *really* join a religious order without having "issues," right? Life just isn't complete unless one has sex, right? I mean, we can't *possibly* ever see Christians, and *especially* Catholic priests and nuns, actually living faithfully to Christ, right? Of course Sister Christina has to give in to temptation, because no one can resist sexual intimacy for a transcendent calling, right? Because sex is love, right? So if Christina and Joey have sex, then it's true love, right?But of course, why did I ever expect godless producers to produce anything but godless results? It simply couldn't compute in the Hollywood head that they could have made this film *without* the fling in the bedroom with all its emotional violins, and it might have actually been a decent (if very slow) film. Silly me again, thinking you can make a movie without depicting everyone as conflicted, cynical, and downright hypocritical.Amazing how one scene can ruin a whole movie.

Not the first film to feature an unlikely relationship between a drifter tough guy, and a nun (Clint and Shirley been there and done that), Hummingbird is nevertheless, a far more worthy effort. Worthy? a Jason Statham movie? Yup, that's right, this is actually a pretty good movie, with some food for thought, and which is well worth a look.Tropic Thunder did a good job of poking fun at the thespian rivalries which exist between 'proper actors' and action stars who feel the sting of not being taken seriously at their chosen craft. But what is particularly interesting about Hummingbird and that notion, is that the film's storyline itself is one which has a character who is making a not dissimilar journey into a wider world; that of a traumatised man of action, who wishes to become a man of warmth and compassion, but can find no easy route to where he wants to be. Whether by accident or by design, this makes what we see on screen in Statham's portrayal, almost a film within a film, as we watch him break away from phoning in an easy and comfortable one dimensional tough guy performance, to someone who has to mine a much deeper seam of acting ability.I've never actually thought Jason Statham was a rotten actor, I suspected he might actually be not bad at it, but we've never really seen him have to do it, because he's never really had the kind of roles where it is necessary in order to get his movies in the can, until Hummingbird that is.Of course if movies were filmed in sequence from beginning to end, that would have given Jason Statham the gift of being able to evolve his craft as his character in the movie evolves, but since they are not, what we see is Statham demonstrating what I had suspected, that he can actually pull out a pretty convincing, measured, emotional performance, and there is more than one such moment when he is required to do so in Hummingbird. It's not one which will have the Academy and the BAFTAS lauding all over him, but in fairness to Statham, I've seen far worse films and performances get such plaudits regularly.Unlike a lot of Statham movies, this is not a one man show, with Agata Buzek providing more than the one dimensional love interest we'd typically see in a Statham movie, and in fact being as much a part of the tale as he is. Casting Buzek in the role was an inspired choice. Little known outside her native Poland, and in Germany where she has often worked, she is one of the well-liked and well known stars of European cinema. So we get someone with serious acting chops sharing screen time with Statham, and credit where it is due, he is not outshone by her acting abilities at all. Moreover, unlike most of his movies, where you'd get some carbon copy bimbo as the love interest, instead we have Buzek's frail and unconventional beauty, which suits the role of a slightly awkward young nun who has her own tragedy to deal with alongside that of Statham's character.This is where the storyline has a good deal of merit, in that the redemption which became the US release's somewhat telegraphed title, we learn, is not only that of Statham's hard man and his guilt over a wartime atrocity, but also that of Buzek's nun, although I won't spoil things by saying exactly what her trauma is.What emerges, is a gentle and convincing love story, but not a convenient one, nor exactly a conventional one either. This juxtaposes beautifully against the more familiar violent aspects which come as little surprise when we know the typical kind of film Statham makes. It's almost a new genre, an intelligent, emotional action movie.When we take into account other stylistic touches in the mix, such as contrasting the modern day surveillance in London with the flashbacks of surveillance from Statham's character's wartime experiences, and a colour palette which is often as dark as the two main character's problems, it's apparent that this is a movie which offers a lot more depth and storyline than we are used to seeing in your average Statham flick.That is not to say the movie is perfect, there are some contrivances and tropes which are occasionally a bit too convenient to make things truly convincing, but having said that, one can forgive these for the purposes of making the unfolding storyline hang together to create a watchable film. It also risks falling between two stools in being perhaps too violent for a girlfriend to cuddle up and watch it with her bloke, but possibly too emotive for many pure action genre fans. But if you like seeing a mental sweat unfold on screen as much as you like seeing a physical one, then it ticks both those boxes to be not only watchable, but one of only a few which does a lot more with the action genre than we are used to seeing, in providing a thoughtful reason for the violence, that thoughtfulness being far more than the typical brief nod it receives in most actioners.If you can find it on DVD for a fiver, then it will be a fiver well spent, because you will certainly watch it more than once.