A Working Man
Jason Statham plays an ex-Royal Marine on a mission in an incomprehensible, formulaic mess in which the Russians are portrayed as the bad guys.
Murder in mind: Jason Statham
Image courtesy of Warner Bros.
There are three types of Jason Statham movie. There’s the accomplished, thrilling big-budget blockbuster. There’s the efficient, albeit cheesy actioner one might describe as a guilty pleasure. And there’s the occasional misfire that makes more money than sense. In A Working Man, the Stath plays Levon Cade, an ex-Royal Marine commando who has learned to live with his demons and who values two things above all else: his young daughter (Isla Gie) and the value of his word. Working as a foreman for a construction company in Chicago, Levon lives in a rented car and has adopted his employer Joe Garcia (Michael Peña) and the latter’s close circle as family. So, when Joe’s teenage daughter is kidnapped from a nightclub, Joe turns to Levon to help find her.
On one level, A Working Man is an old boys’ reunion, being directed by David Ayer (who steered Statham through The Beekeeper), co-scripted by Sylvester Stallone (who appeared with the actor in Expend4bles) and co-starring Jason Flemyng as a particularly odious, wife-beating Russian gangster. When Statham made his very first film, Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998), it was Flemyng who had top-billing. Those were better days.
In keeping with Sylvester Stallone’s preferred mode of enunciation, the actors here mumble their dialogue so lazily that it’s almost impossible to make out what they are saying. It’s not until the Russian mobsters come on board that the discourse becomes vaguely clear (“it’s ‘bang bang’ time!” chirps one). For the sake of consistency, the fights scenes are equally incomprehensible, so that one’s not entirely sure what is going on, thus robbing the sequences of any tension or purpose. All we really know is that the Stath will come out on top every time. What is apparent is that Levon appears to have percussion caps concealed behind his knuckles so that every time he punches someone there’s the accompaniment of a detonation. The sound is all over the place, haplessly chasing the action which proves little more than a series of scenes stitched together by acts of extreme violence. One might think that between them, Sly and Stath could have come up with a halfway decent storyline, other than dishing up the same old, same old, with little rhyme or reason. It really is depressing. Particularly for fans of Jason Statham. There’s nothing pleasurable here, guilty or otherwise.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Jason Statham, Jason Flemyng, Merab Ninidze, Maximilian Osinski, Cokey Falkow, Michael Peña, David Harbour, Noemi Gonzalez, Arianna Rivas, Isla Gie, Emmett J Scanlan, Eve Mauro.
Dir David Ayer, Pro Chris Long, Jason Statham, John Friedberg, David Ayer, Sylvester Stallone, Bill Block and Kevin King Templeton, Screenplay Sylvester Stallone and David Ayer, Ph Shawn White, Pro Des Nigel Evans, Ed Fred Raskin, Music Jared Michael Fry, Costumes Tiziana Corvisieri, Sound Laurent Kossayan.
Black Bear/Cedar Park Entertainment/Punch Palace Productions/Balboa Productions-Warner Bros.
116 mins. USA. 2025. UK and US Rel: 28 March 2025. Cert. 15.
