Notable Cast: Jason Statham, Michael Peña, David Harbour,
Noemi Gonzalez, Jason Flemyng, Merab Ninidze, Maximilian Osinski, Cokey Falkow,
Arianna Rivas, Isla Gie, Emmett Scanlan, Eve Mauro
By the film's end, A Working Man is a full-on fantasy
where the realistic tones of its first half have entirely ceased to exist for a
truly unhinged world. To the point that the location of its final action set
piece looks like a Mario Bava soundstage. The fake-looking trees and a moon
that looks like it's only 18 feet away set the tone for its physics-shattering
action and brutal deaths. Ah, yes, this is precisely what I wanted. Action
films are mostly fantasy films, and the final act embraces that aspect, if not
the entire latter half.
A part of me wishes the entire film were within this caliber
of action cinema. When A Working Man is trying to be a heartfelt and
grounded thriller that sees Statham's Levon attempting to rescue the daughter
of his boss, the film struggles to find its footing in the tropes. What made
the previous outing between star, Statham and director, Ayer, The Beekeeper
work so well is that none of it felt like it needed to be grounded in the world
we live in - just the world that the characters lived in. A Working Man
spends far too much time trying to make us believe we're watching a gritty
crime drama before shedding preconceptions and embracing the Cannon insanity of
its finale. And when it does, it is precisely what this film needed to
be.
The film's heart lies in layering a father-daughter dynamic
within its narrative. Statham’s Levon is working through the system to get more
visitation time with his daughter, which was granted to his father-in-law in
the wake of his wife’s death, and that is meant to be paralleled to the
feelings he has toward Jenny, the daughter of his boss at work, as a surrogate
daughter. When Jenny goes missing, kidnapped while out on the town partying
with her friends, her father, played by Ayer regular Michael Peña, asks Levon
to use his ‘particular set of skills’ to find her.
This is a valid approach, but the theme is ultimately sacrificed for the sake
of its man-on-a-mission plot. The script is not trying that hard to get the two
father/daughter threads to parallel. It feels like it was just Option C on the
action film script formula that was chosen.
Yet, it’s hard for me not to appreciate at least that
director and co-writer David Ayer, who penned the script with the legendary Sly
Stallone, wanted A Working Man to be a little grittier and darker with
its characters and its plot revolving around human trafficking. Ayer has always
loved to delve into the dirt and ditches of the human psyche, even when
dabbling in the strangely compelling films like Sabotage or Fury.
When he gets too far outside reality, he struggles - ergo Bright and Suicide
Squad - so there needs to be a nice balance, and A Working Man
attempts to thread that needle. Unfortunately, it never finds that balance
between the dark and silly that worked so well with The Beekeeper.
A Working Man is littered with enough gusto to keep
audiences attuned, though, and some fun, smaller performances from a litany of
villains, which just keep getting more ridiculous as the film progresses, add
some fun to the mix. Statham is doing his Statham thing, which is either a
selling point or not, depending on the viewer, down to the deadpan line
deliveries and bombastic screen presence. David Harbour is tragically underused
as Levon’s blind friend, Gunny, and the two have shocking chemistry in their
brief time together, and it’s a relative shame that the two don’t get at least
one action scene together.
As for the action, well, it’s what one might expect. The
brutality of key moments is perhaps the most striking, particularly at the end,
as Statham slaughters his way through an entire bloodline of Russian mafia
members that belong to some kind of John Wickian hive of debauchery and
death. Statham impresses as always when he’s smashing a face in or beating two
men to death in the back of a van and while the film doesn’t quite feel the
need to start jabbing in one-liners or puns, there’s plenty of old school
action to get fans excited - particularly in a fun motorcycle chase that erupts
out of nowhere and the aforementioned finale which does allow Statham is use a
plethora of weapons - the most deadly being Bluetooth.
In the grand spectrum, A Working Man is a fairly
run-of-the-mill Statham actioner that’s elevated a bit by the sheer lunacy of
its second half and director David Ayer, who is finding reinvigoration in the
film’s Golan Globus-inspired lack of reality. It’s a shame that some of its
themes around fatherhood or having to confront one’s failures of the past are
never given some of the strength to bolster the action and characters, but
that’s not necessarily what I came to see in A Working Man.
And since we’re now getting Beekeeper 2, there’s hope
that we'll get A Working Man 2 film that eventually leads us down the
road to a crossover film that delivers on the one thing fans are truly
craving—a Statham on Statham showdown.
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