Jason Statham is Sylvester Stallone’s muse in A Working Man, a rather soulless vehicle for blood, gore, and explosions. However, A Working Man knows that no one watches a Statham film for its emotional impact. Statham and director David Ayer have partnered before on The Beekeeper, another copy-and-paste action flick that sees the actor crush some skulls and save the day. Based on the novel Levon’s Trade by Chuck Dixon, A Working Man‘s story expends extra energy to remind us that, though Statham is the most skilled killer you’ve ever seen, he’s just like the rest of us.
Statham might be portraying Levon Cade, but there’s no question it’s Statham we’re watching onscreen. The actor can’t help being anyone but himself, but that’s why we come to see him in the first place. The 21st century boasts fewer and fewer real movie stars, and while he’s no Tom Cruise, Statham might one day be remembered as an Arnold Schwarzenegger type, minus the political career. We get to witness Levon in action early on in A Working Man, but there’s still plenty of clumsy exposition to parse through before we get to the good stuff.
A Working Man Takes On A Silly But Enjoyable Odyssey Of The Criminal Underworld
Statham Explores The Darkest Corners Of The Crime World & Emerges Without A Scratch
Like most modern franchise flicks, A Working Man knows it has to fight for our attention, making all the dialogue sparse and dully expository in the brief moments between bone-crushing action. It’s almost redundant to explain that the film includes no character development, no character relationships, and no nuanced ideas about violence or crime. To call the characters one-dimensional is generous, as the villains are so cartoonishly evil that it’s slightly hard to believe. Fortunately, this makes it easy to yell and cheer when they’re gunned down in cold blood or tortured onscreen.
No one walks into the theater expecting to watch a movie with a plot, so I can almost let go of my ᴀssumptions about what this movie should be. The action is well-choreographed, there are some fun visual set pieces, and A Working Man has a sense of humor. Even if you don’t share a taste for this particular brand of comedy, A Working Man is self-aware enough to give us plenty of space to laugh at its over-the-top action and caricatures.
A Working Man encourages you to sit back and get comfortable since there isn’t a second of doubt that Levon will win the day.
Like most one-man-army action movies that revolve around the blue-collar world, A Working Man is, at its core, aspirational. It’s easy to imagine that you, too, could somehow escape the clutches of the Russian mafia and single-handedly save a young girl from the sadistic hands of a killer. A Working Man encourages you to sit back and get comfortable since there isn’t a second of doubt that Levon will win the day. Unfortunately, this makes it almost impossible to build tension, as there’s no situation too extreme for me to imagine that Levon won’t emerge unscathed.
However, A Working Man wastes no time putting Levon in many strange and unexpected situations. How or why he arrives at these different locations and meets with these people gets murky, but eventually, it all ties together and gets him to the girl. The girl, Jenny, is played by the young Arianna Rivas, who doesn’t have much screen time, but A Working Man gives her a few heroic moments of her own to break out of the damsel in distress archetype. She’s one of the few memorable characters besides Levon, his daughter, and David Harbour’s Gunny, Levon’s singular friend.
A Working Man Doesn’t Hesitate To Set Itself Up For A Franchise
His Newest Action Movie Might Be The Project Statham Has Been Waiting For
Statham has been looking for the right action universe for years, and he might have found it. A Working Man understands that Statham has fully transitioned from a romantic action hero to a paternal action hero. With no love interest for Levon and many on-the-nose reminders that he is a capital-G Girl Dad, A Working Man makes him approachable and uncontroversial. Though the indiscriminate violence could characterize him as an anti-hero, A Working Man isn’t willing to go there. The movie knows we want to see ourselves in Levon, so he has to be the hero, plain and simple.
It doesn’t take an active imagination to see where the future of A Working Man is going. A few plots are left unresolved. Levon still has to win custody of his young daughter, paving the way for a sequel or two if the film makes a profit. Statham has proved himself an ᴀsset at the box office, and when it comes to movies like A Working Man, a critical reception has little to do with the project’s performance. It’s a mindless good time, and I’ll be interested to see where the franchise goes.
