Ahhh, shit, here we go again. Another day, another generic Jason Statham movie, this time titled A Working Man. I guess they were trying to appeal to the common, ordinary, or, dare I say it, working man with this title. Did it work? Well, judging by the box office, it most certainly did. Made on a $40 million budget, the movie went on to make almost $100 million. And that’s without the streaming stuff. However, I think the more important question is: is this movie any good? Well, it’s watchable, I’ll tell you that. Just barely but still quite watchable if you know what you’re getting yourself into. As you can already guess, Jason Statham plays the one-man-army guy taking down a mysterious crime syndicate that kidnapped his friend’s daughter.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because the plot is a watered-down version of Taken. Even though that story was quite wobbly at least it shone a light on human trafficking a bit. To make things even more interesting, the plot is based on a 2014 novel Levon’s Trade by Chuck Dixon. A Working Man, oddly enough, is an apt title for a highly commercial project just going through the motions of an action movie. People have to get paid somehow and stuff like this gets them paid. The old saying goes: you do one for the studio and then one for yourself. Director David Ayer (End of Watch) and Jason Statham apparently signed a two-movie deal with Amazon MGM Studios.
The first one was The Beekeeper, a bit tighter actioner that’s going to get a sequel, followed by this one. Do you watch television? Have you ever stumbled upon all those recent but cheap-looking action movies with paper-thin stories, laughable dialogue, and questionable acting? They’re usually on some random television station late at night as a “refreshing break” from all those classic action movies they used to run for decades. Well, A Working Man is a better version of those movies. Why would anyone watch something like that? I wanted to kill an hour and a half by watching something mildly entertaining.
I didn’t want complex stories or characters but something simplistic, something almost laughably simplistic. And I got exactly that complete with the Russians as the bad guys. The action is totally unbelievable and I think that’s A Working Man’s biggest flaw. I mean, if we’re going all out, let’s go all out and make another mess like Fury. Do you know that I have a ten-year-old rant still in my drafts about that hilarity? The title is Fury or You Can’t Kill Brad Pitt. That’s a story for another day so let’s get back to this one. The script, co-written by none other than Sylvester Stallone, is barely acceptable. What’s not acceptable though is that running time of almost two hours.
Just fucking cut thirty minutes and keep things tight, you’re not making an epic here. Plus, the theaters always work better with shorter movies so I really don’t know why they kept it this long. The bad guys are not scary but comical and absolutely unbelievable. At least we got a full R rating and there will be several decent shootouts and fights. However, I simply cannot be silent on the subject of our “working man’s” weapon of choice. Out of the entire fucking armory full of all kinds of weapons, knowing he’s going into close-quarters combat he chooses a fucking M14 rifle. It was first introduced back in 1957 replacing the legendary Garand.
Just ten years later, it was replaced by the M16, an infinitely better choice for this mission. If I had to choose something, I would go for a Heckler & Koch submachine gun like an MP7A1. Seeing Statham shoot the bad guys in the same room with him using this long-ass rifle with the scope directly at his broad forehead is hilarious. But at least it’s entertaining and he does kill one guy using it. And I guess that the biker gang, led by a beast of a man that goes by the name of Chidi Ajufo, was kind of cool and menacing. Especially when I first saw him sitting in that throne chair, an obvious riff on the Game of Thrones.
Director: David Ayer
Writers: Chuck Dixon, Sylvester Stallone, David Ayer
Cast: Jason Statham, Arianna Rivas, Merab Ninidze, Maximilian Osinski, Cokey Falkow, Michael Peña
Fun Facts: All indoor scenes were filmed in London, England while outdoors scenes were filmed in Chicago, USA.
Rating:
IMDb Link: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9150192/
