At this point you know what you’re going to get with a Jason Statham vehicle, and when it’s one penned by Sylvester Stallone and directed by David Ayer (who, in addition to such actioners as Suicide Squad and End of Watch, was behind last year’s Statham surprise The Beekeeper), you shouldn’t be remotely taken aback that A Working Man is molded in the same vein as a late 90s/early 2000s model, with excessive violence, a damsel in distress, and a plethora of punchable villains weaved in for stereotypical substance.
After an opening credit sequence that lays out enough imagery to indicate that Statham’s “working man” is one with a very special set of skills, we’re introduced to his Levon Cade, working diligently as the foreman on a construction site overseen by the pleasant Garcia family. Levon is something of a nomad, but he has a peaceful enough existence, with his young daughter, Merry (Isla Gie), his sole priority. They have a cute enough father-daughter bond, but there’s legal issues surrounding such, with Merry’s maternal grandfather keeping visitation to a minimum off the back of him blaming Levon for his daughter’s death.
As much as that adds a little bit of intended emotionality, Merry’s presence in the film feels a lot like an afterthought, as A Working Man‘s driving crux is the abduction of Jenny Garcia (Arianna Rivas), the bright, young daughter of Levon’s employ, Joe Garcia (Michael Peña) and his wife, Carla (Noemi Gonzalez). As much as Levon claims to not want to get involved – “I’m not that man anymore”, is his cryptic reasoning – we know it’s only a matter of time before he’s taking names and cracking skulls, and the shifty bartender that seemed to initiate Jenny’s abduction at the bar she’s last seen at is his first visit on a long list of door knockings that ultimately result in someone shot, beaten, or a combination of both.
Though he has a little assistance from David Harbour‘s long-time mate, Levon is essentially a one-man killing machine, and seeing him take out some truly heinous character creations laces A Working Man with a certain glee. With it centering around human trafficking, there is a nastiness to the film, but Stallone and Ayer’s script is wise enough to never make it overtly horrifying to the point of rejection. And audiences aren’t here for such gritty realism either, at least not those eagerly sitting for A Working Man. There’s a safety in a Statham flick, and as much as we could pick apart a lot of what takes place here – next to Levon figuring out who is who in record time, a lot of the villainous archetypes feel almost moustache-twirling in their theatricality – it’s easier to let it wash over you and just accept that your brain doesn’t need to comprehend what’s unfolding across the far-too-long 116 minutes.
A Working Man is a middling Statham effort overall. It’s one of his better performances though, and had this tightened itself at a more digestible 90 minutes, this could’ve been a more solid sitting, but it isn’t able to rise above itself in its current form. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of fun to be had with just how ridiculous everything gets here. There isn’t much subtlety to proceedings, some of the set pieces are slick (if mean spirited), and there’s a certain admiration in how it has the air of a franchise starter to it (if you aren’t aware, Levon Cade as a character has almost a dozen books to his name), leaving A Working Man a serviceable action commodity from a genre-proved trio that revel in their own masculinity.
TWO AND A HALF STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
A Working Man is now screening in Australian theatres.
