Movie Review – A Working Man
Principal Cast : Jason Statham, Jason Flemyng, Merab Ninidze, Maximilian Osinski, Cokey Falkow, Arianna Rivas, Michael Pena, David Harbour, Noemi Gonzalez, Emmett J Scanlan, Eve Maura, Isla Gie, Andrej Kaminsky.
Synopsis: Levon Cade left his profession behind to work construction and be a good dad to his daughter. But when a local girl vanishes, he’s asked to return to the skills that made him a mythic figure in the shadowy world of counter-terrorism.
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Fresh from playing The Beekeeper, perennial tough-talking action man Jason Statham returns to screens in David Ayer’s bruising, obtuse, yet entirely cathartic ass-kicking project entitled A Working Man, cementing his status as a decidedly one-note actor tailor-made for indomitably asinine material such as this. Statham’s screen persona could best be described as “leathery” or “combative”, and this two-hour repurposing of Liam Neeson’s Taken is yet another entry in the emotionally vacant, pulse-poundingly ludicrous action subgenre perpetuated by Hollywood. It continues to tap a rich vein of easy money by having a hardened action hero batter a legion of henchmen, thugs and ne’er-do-wells into pulp. Statham, ever the gruff Brit, plays yet another former military special ops type now working the tools and living the simple life, who inevitably becomes embroiled in violence when he must unleash his “unique set of skills” on a parade of generic baddies. He pummels, punches, kicks, slices and shoots his way through a frenzied orgy of violence that seems designed to play well in intellectually barren middle-America.
Here, Statham is Levon Cade (because of course he is), a former British Royal Marine now working as a construction foreman for a wealthy, salt-of-the-earth family business run by Joe Garcia (Michael Peña) and his wife Carla (Noemi Gonzalez). When their daughter Jenny (Arianna Rivas) is kidnapped and trafficked by underlings of the Russian mob, they beg Cade to intervene. After approximately half a heartbeat of hesitation, Cade agrees, and thus begins a one-man demolition job across the US East Coast. Along the way, he takes down not only shadowy organised crime elements but also, for reasons never entirely clear, a gaggle of thuggish bikers at an off-the-map dive bar.
Having followed David Ayer’s career and online musings for years, I genuinely believe he’s a solid bloke. He also has a distinctive visual style—something that sets him apart from many journeyman directors. However, the critical and commercial fallout from Suicide Squad—which came on the heels of his breakout success End of Watch—seems to have set him on a trajectory away from daring, provocative work. Instead, he’s become a director content to bash out increasingly generic slop, despite the talent to do far more. Films like Fury, Sabotage and Bright had moments of interest, even flashes of brilliance, but The Beekeeper and now A Working Man suggest a creative rut Ayer hasn’t yet escaped. That said, both films have their merits—I’ll admit I had a blast with the absurdity of A Working Man’s preposterous premise—but there’s a sameness to the narrative beats and tonal flatness here that feels, frankly, exhausted.
Statham is, as ever, The Stath™—a cardboard cut-out of an action hero doing exactly what you expect. Ayer and co-writer Sylvester Stallone make a token effort to inject emotional heft into Cade and the Garcia family dynamic, but it’s only partially effective. Michael Peña is a capable actor when given strong material, but the writing here is appalling—AI-generated, flavourless mobster guff that even Scorsese would’ve chucked in the bin twenty years ago. Still, Russians make convenient villains these days, and seeing fellow Brit Jason Flemyng meet his end in a heated pool as a mafioso captain does stir the base-level adrenaline. Ayer and Stallone never truly develop a compelling backstory for Cade or anyone else, relying instead on vague military trauma and hard-man mystique to drive character motivation. As the plot lurches forward, second-string characters are tossed in to pad out the victim count, some offering groan-inducing attempts at comic relief. I’ll admit a few of the lines made me chuckle, but the balance between the film’s self-serious posturing and the ineptitude of its cartoonish villains had me rolling my eyes hard enough to cause actual physical harm.
Let’s be honest—if you sit down to watch A Working Man, you already know what you’re in for. Ayer and his production team deliver on that promise with muscular efficiency. Statham’s granite-like expression bulldozes through the screenplay’s trailer-worthy one-liners and by-the-numbers plot. The appeal, such as it is, lies in how inventive the filmmakers can be with the action sequences, kills and carnage. Some are brutally effective, others feel perfunctory, and the clunky editing often gives the whole affair a slightly awkward, disjointed feel. Still, for this brand of brain-off action cinema, A Working Man delivers a serviceable, if uninspired, ride. I don’t expect high art from The Stath™, and this film doesn’t exceed those expectations—it meets them squarely with a clenched fist and a thousand-yard stare.
Perhaps we’ve been spoilt by the artistry of top-tier action films in recent years. For every balletic bloodbath in John Wick or the operatic insanity of Mad Max: Fury Road, we get a counterweight like A Working Man, which clings to the late-‘80s template of brutal vengeance cinema but forgets to bring the charm. The tone is uneven, teetering uncomfortably close to racial stereotypes at times, while the cinematography struggles to make much sense of the action. There’s a distinct cheapness to the production, too: a reliance on secluded locations, empty warehouses and isolated rural haunts that limit the film’s sense of scale. Unlike The Beekeeper, which at least hinted at a wider narrative world, A Working Man feels boxed in—like watching a PlayStation cutscene with an overactive smoke machine.
Still, there’s something gleefully anarchic about watching Statham take on waves of grim-faced Russian criminals and their assorted flunkies. Dumb, loud and tonally erratic, A Working Man is sub-par Statham but directed with the kind of gung-ho obliviousness that makes it weirdly compelling. A minor work, no question—but for fans of bone-crunching, bullet-strewn revenge flicks, there are worse ways to spend two hours.
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