I skipped last year’s The Beekeeper for a fairly simple reason: it looked like a fairly generic-looking action movie that came out in January. However, it apparently did pretty well, all told. I know my girlfriend said she saw part of it at home with her parents, and she said what she saw was pretty good, even comparing it to a John Wick movie. Granted, she’s never seen a John Wick movie (that may change at some point soon), but I took her endorsement seriously enough to consider checking out the next collaboration between star Jason Statham and writer/director David Ayer, A Working Man. Granted, the trailers also made it look like a generic action movie, but at least this one came out in March.
Then again, I could have gone to see Death of a Unicorn, but I had my reasons to choose A Working Man as the weekend release to see first.
Former Royal Marine Levon Cade (Statham) is working as a construction site manager for the Garcia family led by father Joe (a wasted Michael Pena) and wife Carla (Noemi Gonzalez), while Levon has a special bond with their 19 year old daughter Jenny (Arianna Rivas). He also is having a custody dispute with his late wife’s father over custody of his young daughter Merry (Isla Gie), leading Levon to stockpile his money as much as possible to the point where he’s sleeping in his car and many people at his work site keep giving him food because he won’t buy it for himself. As it is, one night Jenny goes out with some girlfriends to celebrate the end of their first semester of college only for Jenny to be targeted by some sketchy characters who kidnap her from a bar and take her away.
Joe and Carla, seeing no other options to get their daughter back, offer Levon a good deal of money to get Jenny back, but Levon declines. His conscience, however, leads him to seek out some advice from another former military man, his blind buddy Gunny (an also-wasted David Harbour). Levon won’t take any money to find Jenny, but he’s more than willing to use his skills to track her down, an action that leads him into conflict with the Russian mafia, a biker gang led by another former military man, corrupt cops, and plenty of other sketchy type people. Can Levon get Jenny back before the worst happens?
I said above the trailer made the movie look like a generic action movie, and it turns out that is exactly what this movie is. Ayer co-wrote script, based off a novel by comic book writer Chuck Dixon, with Sylvester Stallone, and it is incredibly cliched. Statham has lines like “They’re paying you off, too” that come across as completely unnecessary. There are no real surprises here aside from maybe the fact that Levon feels some empathy for the biker leader due to his status as another former military man. Even the most of the recognizable actors like Statham, Harbour, and Pena are giving rather rote performances. There’s nothing really special here. The only member of the cast that stands out is Jason Flemyng as a tough-guy Russian mob boss, and he’s not in the movie all that much. A Working Man could have really used a few more colorful bad guys if nothing else. Aside from their wardrobes, the Russian mobsters and bikers here are as generic as Statham’s badass.
That could perhaps be improved if the director led to some exciting action sequences or something, but the movie’s pacing just feels off, and there’s nothing really special about any of the fight scenes or gun battles. I never felt the slightest bit of concern for Statham’s character as the bad guys never seemed to be tough enough to stand up to him, and he wasn’t interesting all that much either. There’s even a moment or two that just felt kinda dumb, and not in a good way. Maybe if the movie had the sort of tone that many of Arnold Schwarezegger’s best movies in his heyday, where the movie didn’t quite take itself so seriously, it could have worked, but no, nothing like that at all happens here. It’s just a dull, generic action movie in the end.
Grade: C-
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