Russian sex traffickers kidnap the wrong girl, unleashing Statham's unrelenting revenge in a competent but forgettable remake from "The Beekeeper" director David Ayer.
Jason Statham is good at his job, which explains why he keeps booking the same kind of movies; well, that and the fact that people keep watching them. By reuniting the British action star with "The Beekeeper" writer-director David Ayer, "Working Man" does its best to provide a backstory or motive before launching Statham's new character, Levon Cade, into a spectacularly violent rampage. Statham's responsibility here is to make the Royal Marines veteran turned Chicago construction foreman seem experienced enough to cause serious damage, without directly repeating the dozen other films in which he's already done so.
Director: David Ayer
Writers: Sylvester Stallone, David Ayer, Chuck Dixon
Stars: Jason Statham, Jason Flemyng, Merab Ninidze
Statham plays the "reluctant" vigilante, putting aside his exceptionally lethal skills for a respectable job and shared custody of his young daughter (Isla Gie), something that isn't easy living in a rented van. Before the trouble starts, Levon is well-liked by everyone; his coworkers bring him home-cooked meals, and his boss, Joe Garcia (Michael Peña), gives the troubled ex-commando a chance to make amends. Then, Joe's college-aged daughter, Carla (Noemí González), is kidnapped by Russian thugs while celebrating her first semester of business school. She's not his daughter, but Levon frowns and vows to do whatever it takes to bring her home; even if Carla turns out to be resourceful enough, she might not even need his help.
The only real surprise is discovering that "A Working Man" is adapted from a novel. “Levon’s Trade” is the first in a concise 12-book series by Chuck Dixon, which includes the line “Levon is a cracker. He makes Jack Reacher look like a crossing guard” on the back cover: an unsourced synopsis, expressed with roughly the same grammatical finesse as Dixon’s prose. The screenplay credit goes to Ayer and Sylvester Stallone, which makes sense. This is the kind of character Stallone popularized in the 1980s, when critics rejected the army-man archetype, but the box office triumphed, to the point that people are now nostalgic for Stallone’s simplified moral code. Here we have “Sound of Freedom” as a second-rate Jason Statham movie.
Will audiences ever tire of this nonsense? If anything, this is closer to what moviegoers are looking for than eight of the ten recent Best Picture nominees (the "Dune" sequel and "The Wizard of Oz" prequel were hits, but the other finalists, which didn't rely on formulas or familiar intellectual property, failed to connect with American audiences). Meanwhile, action will always be in demand, and actors capable of pulling it off are in short supply these days.
The obscenely built Dwayne Johnson has practically assumed the Schwarzenegger mantle, Nicolas Cage continues to star in the craziest science fiction, and Liam Neeson has the crazy father/elderly-murderer trope covered. But now that Bruce Willis has thankfully been able to retire, the bald, big-headed Statham (who has been creating variations on the same role since 2002's "The Transporter") is even more appealing as the gruff skull-crusher. Between "The Expendables," Statham was the little guy. Here, the compact yet powerful thug's professional training and quick thinking give him an advantage over larger, better-armed adversaries, turning anything from a bucket of nails to a stray sledgehammer into a deadly weapon.
For those who remember Statham's square-jawed, hairless film debut in "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels," it's amusing to see humor reduced to a knowing smile or a well-timed snarl, even if scripts now lack the verbal wit of Guy Ritchie (it was Ritchie who gave the star his last great film, the box-truck robbery flick "Wrath of Man"). "A Working Man" sees Statham reunite with Jason Flemyng; his "Lock, Stock" co-star plays one of the many shady Russian oligarchs Levon faces in his methodical and brutal pursuit of Carla.
Levon starts with the bartender from the club where Carla disappeared, but his interrogation techniques prove somewhat lacking. It's intimidating enough to see someone waterboarded in their own bathtub or tied up and suspended over their private pool, but Levon's sources keep dying during interrogation, complicating his investigation. It's implied that, before going into construction, Levon had applied his military training to civilian life.
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