I'm watching the Transporter again, and I became curious about Jason Statham's MA background. Does anyone know what it is?
I believe he was trained in the art of HO-LEE-WOO-D. Seriously, I don't think he has any formal training beyond the fight choreography, but I may be wrong.
I think I remember reading somewhere that he was a gymnast when he was younger, which prbably accounts for his agility.
The kind of kicking he's doing looks like you need a little more than a couple months worth of cramming with a fight choreographer. I'm thinking TKD or some other Korean art.
I definitely know that he took MA as a kid. I also believe that he was on the British Olympic diving team one year, no kidding! EDIT: I wasn't crazy, I read it here: http://movies.yahoo.com/shop?d=hc&id=1800023090&cf=biog&intl=us
re: he was a gymnast and an olympic diver. He is obviously very fit. Corey yuen choreographed the fights. he is the guy who showed JS all the moves. Thats what the fight choreographer does. Corey Yuen is one of the best choreographers around. He went to the same school as Jackie Chan, samo Hung. A good fight choreographer can make anyone (mostly) look good on screen. They know how and what to shoot and they know how to edit it all as well.
^^^ Take heed of Butcher Wing. Not much else I can add to the post. Apart from the obvious....."Its hard to make anyone look this good"
here its says: http://www.greencine.com/article?action=view&articleID=197&pageID=359 Corey Yuen 'Did Jason Stathma have martial arts training before he made The Transporter? No, he didn't have any martial arts experience. He was a professional diver in Europe, so he caught on pretty quick. Jason put a lot of time and effort into training for The Transporter - three months. He worked very hard for the role. I thought he did quite well' but on other sites it quotes Boxing, karate and gymnastics? but no specific style or Ryu-ha.
I spent about 30 minutes tring to discover what his background in Martial arts is once but couldn't find it, odly everywhere I found with google mentioned that he had a lot of MA experience before he did the transporter but none of them said what the experience was in.
That's SIlat I thought it to be pretty obvious after lookin how he used his opponent's clothes to immobilize them and stuff |Cain|
Movie-fu. I read a feature article about him in some magazine last year. He was a street hustler in London (as in fraud, swindler, con-man), then a world-class diver. He got into acting after that, and funneled all the physical discipline he needed in diving, into preparation for his action scenes. He practices the fight scenes for hours and hours on end, over and over again, with stunt men and choreographers, with the express goal of making his moves look both real and very strong. And he exercises a lot. So -- no formal martial arts training, but he's a legitimate athlete.
I don't know about prior to The Transporter. But I think he's pretty tight with Bas Rutten these days. Read that in a magazine at some point. It's funny. I've seen some footage of him training for various fight scenes. And he looks a lot more like a trained martial artist in those than he did in the actual movies. Watching him throw a spinning hook kick, I'd have guessed he'd been at it a while.
