A Working Man is another workmanlike Jason Statham bloodbath.

 

As he did last year in The Beekeeper, the English hardman again plays a guy who used to employ a very particular set of skills but is now living a modest, peaceful life — until a terrible thing happens to someone he cares about. Then millions die.

 

I’m exaggerating, but really: These aren’t so much movies as set-ups for human target shooting galleries. David Ayer, who has directed both recent Statham films, added some clever stagings and quirky supporting characters last time and throws in some rudimentary emotional intelligence this go-round, but his only real interest is in how many bad guys — and people who get between Statham and the villains — can be killed before the production budget runs out.

 

The star’s old Expendables co-star Sylvester Stallone took a stab at adapting Levon’s Trade, Chuck Dixon’s source novel for this film, before Ayer made his own pass at the script. The Stallone factor may explain Working Man’s more sentimental elements — Statham’s Levon, for example, is a widowed Chicago construction foreman who spends all his pay on a custody fight for his tween daughter Merry (a nicely scrappy Isla Gie) with his rich jerk of a father-in-law. Perhaps a side Stallone effect is the hero’s lack of good quips, but let’s not cast aspersions on the wit of Rambo’s writer.

To get his daughter back, Levon’s done a 180 from his past as a British Royal Guard. But then scummy human traffickers kidnap his bosses’ teenage whiz kid, Jenny Garcia (Arianna Rivas). Her teary dad Joe (Michael Peña, a veteran of more serious Ayer productions End of Watch and Fury), begs Levon to find and rescue her.

 

“I’m sorry, that’s not who I am anymore,” Statham’s gruff character remarks. A scene later, Levon visits blind former comrade Gunny (David Harbour), who, as his name would indicate, is also a high-caliber armorer. Levon’s subsequent, convoluted investigation turns up meth-dealing biker gangs, crooked cops, cosplay-loving perverts, and around 15 levels of Russian mafia entities, each of whom has a bewildering cadre of freaky people and relatives they profess to care about. Some of the latter are distinguished by their extremely goofy-looking tracksuits. A few anchor Working Man’s best-written scenes, such as Jason Flemyng, whose mid-level godfather Levon interrogates imaginatively; and Maximilian Osinski’s Dimi, a calculating dullard who says funny things like “I am the big potatoes!”

 

The film repeatedly loses momentum as Levon kills his way through all of these sources to find Jenny. Meanwhile, she’s proving too much to handle for anyone tasked with minding her; Rivas sure gives a lot of fight for a perpetually bound damsel in distress.

 

As for Statham, he’s remarkably fit for a 57-year-old, yet the film’s action choreography bears hints of considering his, and presumably his stunt double’s, age. Hand-to-hand combat tends to be tightly framed, with wider pictures reserved for gunfire. That said, there are a few impactful set pieces, like the two-on-one brawl in the back of a moving step van.

 

But this Statham exercise, like most, is mainly about body count. While that seems to be what his faithful fans want, it just gets kind of tedious for the rest of us.

At least no one in the new movie discusses how his character thinks like an insect, which is an improvement over Beekeeper. Russian criminals blurting that he’s the devil may not be much of an improvement, but for now, baby steps.

 

Rating 5/10

Boluwatife Adesina
Website | + posts

Boluwatife Adesina is a media writer and the helmer of the Downtown Review page. He’s probably in a cinema near you.