‘A Working Man’ stars Jason Statham and is written by Sylvester Stallone, so let’s just say you get what you’re gonna get

PHOENIX (AZFamily) — All in a hard day’s work.

Synopsis

A Working Man follows Levon Cade (Jason Statham), an ex-marine who now lives a civilian life as a construction worker. When his boss Joe’s (Michael Peña) teenage daughter Jenny (Arianna Rivas) is kidnapped by human traffickers, Levon sets out to find her, not caring who he has to kill or maim along the way. Yep, this sure seems like a Jason Statham movie.

My thoughts

If there’s any actor the words “a working man” aptly apply to, it’s Jason Statham. Well, I guess Eric Roberts has him beat (have you seen his IMDb page?!), but when it comes to an actor who’s a reliable “working man”, the Stathe is it. The guy has succeeded in practically playing the same character in the same type of movie for decades with no signs of slowing down any time soon.

I imagine the boardroom pitch for a Jason Statham movie always goes like this. “It’s Jason Statham as [blank].” He’s been a transporter, a spy, a hitman, a beekeeper, a man who needs to keep his artificial heart charged with electricity, and all sorts of other roles. No matter what, these roles usually involved him punching people in the face and beating them senseless with a variety of objects. When you see Statham on a poster, you know exactly what type of movie you’re going to get.

From green beret to blue-collar

Well, now Jason Statham has officially become A Working Man, more specifically a construction worker with a sledgehammer who must save a woman from human traffickers. Sounds like fun, right? Well, yeah, it kind of is, but with some caveats. For instance, can I take legal action against whoever in marketing designed the poster showing Statham burying a dude in cement? Because that does not happen in this movie.

Of course, Levon Cade isn’t just a construction worker but has a military background which gives him all sorts of deadly skills. He’s trying to leave his past as a killer behind, but as things tend to go for protagonists like him, trouble has a funny way of reigniting that killer instinct. When we see Jason Statham one step away from whistling away at work on a construction set, it’s simply a ticking time bomb where the entire audience is anticipating the boom.

Luckily, he’s in the most cliché movie ever made and it doesn’t take long for his friend’s daughter to be kidnapped by some human traffickers. What follows for Levon is a descent into a criminal underworld consisting of shady characters like Russian mobsters and drug-dealing biker gangs. As you can see, director David Ayer and screenwriter Sylvester Stallone (yes, you read that right) pull out all the action movie cliché stops. That’s okay, though.

Normally it’s weird to apply the word “cliché” as a positive, but you know the old saying, right? “A cliché is a cliché for a reason.” They work, which is why people keep using them, and with certain actors or filmmakers, you kind of expect them to give us what we’re used to. We’re here to see Jason Statham punch, pummel, shoot, stab, and commit other acts of violence against hapless goons, so we’ll kind of accept whatever excuse you can give for him to do that.

It’s not really a problem of it being generic, but Stallone’s script is a bit too overstuffed with characters and plot threads that it lacks focus or really anything compelling. Even worse, it lacks urgency, which is something you want in a kidnapping movie. Compared to fellow human trafficking action flick Taken, which puts its foot on the gas once Liam Neeson gets that phone call, it feels like Statham here is screwing around and wasting time with way too many people.

Constructing a collaboration

Like Statham, director David Ayer is also quite the working man himself. The guy’s been consistently pumping out similar types of crime and action-related movies for 25 years now, so he also has a brand and style all his own. It’s a pretty hit-and-miss brand, but you know what he’s going to provide, especially now with Statham, which seems like it could turn into quite a creative partnership.

Ayer and Statham just released The Beekeeper last year, which wasn’t the most amazing action movie ever, but one I would describe as “quality nonsense”. It is so unabashedly silly and self-aware, that you can’t help but have fun with it. Unlike The Beekeeper, A Working Man takes itself a little too seriously. It’s still a fairly entertaining action flick thanks to Statham doing his thing, but there’s a severe lack of ridiculous dialogue here, especially one-liners.

Aside from one brief moment, Ayer and Stallone never take advantage of the whole construction worker angle. All the marketing may show Statham brandishing a sledgehammer, but he doesn’t smack even one guy upside the head with it. Statham shooting and punching people is all fine and good, but imagine the hilarious schlock we could have gotten out of Statham constantly swinging that thing around, or like the poster suggested, burying someone in cement.

It is strangely amusing that Ayer clearly loves the John Wick movies so much to the point of ripping off many elements of them in both this and The Beekeeper, but he doesn’t commit to shooting or editing the action like John Wick. The choreography clearly seems Wick-inspired, but the way Ayer conveys the action is frenetic featuring more camera angles and cuts. These action scenes are still pretty decent, though, mostly because there’s a true professional performing them all.

Statham is good as always. His character, and the story, are more stoic and serious here, so he gets to actually act in a few scenes, but when he’s doing his thing, he’s doing it like no other action star can. There’s also a pretty good supporting cast here, with the committed actors doing their best to breathe some life into their generic characters. Arianna Rivas as Jenny is unfortunately awful, though, which takes away a lot of tension when she’s in peril.

Final verdict

A Working Man is based on the novel Levon’s Trade by Chuck Dixon, which is only the first of the ten novels featuring the character. If this makes a decent profit, then I’m sure we’ll get at least one sequel to this down the line. Let’s just hope that Statham gets to be more unleashed for it because you can’t just give the man a sledgehammer and not let him use it. At least The Beekeeper will be returning next year, hopefully with more puns.

But for now, what we end up getting here is a movie with very David Ayer direction, a very Sylvester Stallone script, and a very Jason Statham performance. In other words, it has pretty much what you would expect from all three of these names, even if it’s nowhere close to any of their best work. They’re all working men in their own right, though, especially Stallone back in the day, so if you’re in the mood for some meatheaded machismo, look no further.