Freelance and Fantastical Work: A Working Man (2025) Review

Director: David Ayer

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. 

 

Written By Matt Malpica Reifschneider