A Working Man

Levon Cade (Jason Statham) is a working man. He is ex-British military. His wife committed suicide while he was away on duty. He is now struggling to raise their daughter. He works construction for the beloved Garcia family. One night, Jenny Garcia gets kidnapped while out at a bar with her friends. Levon takes on the Russian mob to find her.

Jason Statham is well within his comfort zone in this action B-movie. The action is fun. The production is pretty good and better than the average B-movie. The story is fine. Jenny should probably be Levon's daughter instead. The villains are comic-book adjacent. They should really stop asking, "Why he's doing this for one girl?" It gets annoying and dumb. I thought he should leave those missing person flyers every time he kills a gangster. This is mostly fine for what it is.

I have a particular set of skills and sitting through this movie is not one of them. This movie tried so hard to emulate others of a genre, the classic revenge flick.... but fails miserabl. I didn't find myself attached to any character or empathetic, sympathetic, or even just rooting for anyone at any given moment including the star of the movie. The pacing is too slow. The action is almost comical. I'm guessing it was meant to be that way, but unlike DC movies that pull it off this was just laughable... I was so disinterested that even by the climactic end it was just going through the paces to see who lives and who dies. Hollywood forgets that great writing makes great movies.... and the writing for this was juvenile, not creative and simply not entertaining... I had higher hopes for something written by and produced by Sylvester Stallone, who knows action movies.

Original, exciting and intelligent! You've never seen Jason Statham in a movie like this before... is something I won't be saying about 'A Working Man' or probably any future Statham movie. You can easily fill in the all too familiar blanks. Jason is an ex____ who has put those days behind him. Now he must return to his old ways and rescue _____ while kicking the bad guys asses along the way.

The first act bolts out of the gate at a rapid pace, so fast in fact, I thought I was watching the trailer.

A lot of the dialogue was inaudible, maybe because of the British people doing bad American or Russian accents. Which would explain why most of the film was trying to pass off England as Chicago.

I was never sure if it was being played for laughs, with sudden dramatic head turns and theatrical musical stings. Making it all feel a bit camp - especially when the villains are dressed as vampires or like they've fallen into a lost property box.

Thanks to co-screenwriter Sylvester Stallone, you're pummelled with cliche after cliche, desperately trying to emulate the classic action movies of the 80's but missing the target by a mile. The unintentionally funny scenes do deliver some laugh out loud moments which make the experience more bearable. I wasn't expecting much, but I was expecting to be more entertained than I was.

So, If you enjoy Statham being Statham and aren't in the mood for something new, then by all means, knock yourself out and give this a go.

• Nick

@WatchItWombat.

For full disclosure, this was the third film I watched at the cinema and having already sat through "A Minecraft Movie" I was flagging. A film this perfunctory and pedestrian was not what I was hoping for.

Levon Cade (Jason Statham) is an ex-Royal Marines commando, now working construction for the Garcia family. When their daughter, Jenny (Arianna Rivas) is kidnapped from a bar, Cade decides to rescue her. His quest takes him from low level drug dealers, all the way up to Russian mafia bosses, as he kills his way closer to his goal.

The problem is, whilst there's nothing particularly wrong with "A Working Man" there's also nothing particularly good, or perhaps better said, nothing particularly interesting about the film either. It feels like it's made on autopilot with a staid 'kill your way to the top' storyline and mostly rote characters. I say mostly because, as you might imagine, David Harbour is capable of making something relatively interesting out of a supporting role as a blind solder, who served with Cade, and helps him on his mission.

I wasn't surprised to see that the film was made in the UK. Jason Flemyng is particularly unconvincing and massively underused as a Russian mobster, you have Emmett Scanlan is a fairly major role and there is a key turn for British TV stalwart Kenneth Collard. Perhaps the most depressing aspect of the film is that David Ayer now seems to have settled into a rut of mid-price, mid-ambition, mid-quality action films.

Again, doesn't do anything notably bad - but less than 24 hours later and I can already barely remember it.

A Working Man is let down by its overly long run time exacerbated because of how needlessly convoluted its plotting is but it can still deliver the goods frequently enough to be a solid action flick that actually manages to avoid most of the icky issues with these types of stories. From the moment the flashy opening title sequence starts, it's clear this is going to be almost hilariously straight faced and better for it.

Surprisingly, there's a pretty eccentric cast of villains here however, it always remains Jason Statham's movie and him doing his usual extremely serious shtick carries this one as usual. Once again, he's playing squarely to his strengths and it's seriously impressive how him playing this type of character for the umpteenth time doesn't feel anywhere near as stale as when his fellow contemporaries stay in their respective lanes.

David Ayer's direction isn't as strong as his efforts in last year's The Beekeeper whilst keeping the film consistently visually slick despite a couple of weird creative flourishes. The action is unexpectedly choppy when also compared to Ayer and Statham's last collaboration, saved by the stuff that's still easy to see and a wild action packed finale. The overdone score by Jared Michael Fry really helps to nail the throwback feel this is going for.