Warning: Major spoilers for A Working Man below!A Working Man adapted the thriller novel Levon’s Trade, and almost every change it made was for the worse. The movie reunites Jason Statham with director David Ayer, fresh off their $162 million success with The Beekeeper. A Working Man cast Statham as Levon Cade, a retired Royal Marines Commando tasked with rescuing his boss’ kidnapped daughter Jenny (Arianna Rivas) from human traffickers. The film is broadly faithful to Chuck Dixon’s Levon’s Trade, with many of the same characters and story beats appearing.
Still, it also makes some sweeping changes to the source material that make it feel very different. A Working Man’s ending leaves the door open a crack for a potential sequel (there are currently 11 sequel novels to Levon’s Trade), but time will tell if a follow-up actually happens. The adaptation has earned mixed reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, but its box office suggests it could be the start of another Jason Statham franchise.
In The Book, Jenny Is ᴅᴇᴀᴅ Before Levon’s Mission Even Begins
Levon’s Trade is a much darker story
If there was a key difference between A Working Man and Levon’s Trade, it would be tonal. Dixon’s book reads like a gritty 1970s pulp thriller and is considerably meaner than the Statham film. This includes the ending, where Levon confronts Dimi, the Russian gangster who kidnapped Jenny. In the movie, Jenny is confirmed to be alive from an early point, and her kidnappers plan to sell her to a rich client. In the novel, Levon learns that Jenna (her name in the book) died the night Dimi took, having choked on her own vomit after he drugged her.
This casts a tragic pall over the whole story, and the only comfort Levon can take from completing his mission is that her father will know what happened. A Working Man takes the opposite approach, where Jenny is alive throughout and fights back against her captors; she even kills her main tormentor Artemis (Eve Mauro) during the finale. The movie establishes that Cade, Jenny and her family are all close friends; in Levon’s Trade, Cade and Jenna have never met.
A Working Man Cut All Of Gunnery’s Great Quotes
David Harbour lost out on some chewy dialogue
In the Levon Cade books, Gunny Leffertz is a blind African-American man who is older than Levon; in the screen adaptation, Gunny Lefferty is about the same age as Levon and played by David Harbour. Gunny might be blind in both the novel and film, but his other senses are heightened to near-superhuman degrees. He serves the same story function in Levon’s Trade, where Statham’s protagonist leaves his daughter Merry (Isla Gie) with Gunny at his isolated farm when the Russians learn his true idenтιтy.
David Harbour previously worked with director David Ayer on End of Watch and Suicide Squad.
Most of Levon’s Trade’s chapters begin with quotes from Gunny that are filled with tough love or sage advice. Gunny’s sayings include “Body counts don’t mean s*** if they’re not the right bodies“ or “You don’t get to say it’s over until there’s no one left but you to say it.” These quotes returned in some of Dixon’s sequel books and really helped flesh out Gunny’s personality. While Harbour’s Gunny is also full of wisdom, his sayings from the book aren’t peppered into his dialogue.
A Working Man Complicates A Simple Story
The film gives Levon more characters to punch
Levon’s Trade tells a fairly simple story, though it maintains the mystery of what happened to Jenna throughout. For whatever reason, Ayer’s film decided to add a bunch of new subplots and characters, including Emmett J. Scanlan’s Viper and Artemis. This obviously comes with the benefit of giving Levon more evil villains to punch, shoot or explode, but it also makes the narrative weirdly convoluted. It can be tricky to keep track of who is working for whom or which evil gangster is the uncle of another.
In Levon’s Trade, the unfussy storytelling always kept this clear. It’s surprising that Ayer and Sylvester Stallone’s screenplay actually makes the plot more complex instead of simplifying things. These additions contribute to A Working Man’s bloated runtime, where it’s two hours long when a тιԍнт 90 minutes would have worked better.
A Working Man Dropped One Of Levon’s Trade’s Best Subplots
Levon’s Trade’s best AND weirdest subplot
A Working Man retains the subplot where Levon’s evil, rich father-in-law Dr Roth (Richard Heap) is trying to take custody of Merry. Roth believes Cade caused the death of his daughter and that his military past poses a threat to Merry’s safety. He has a point, considering Roth gets attacked and left to die in a fire by Russian hitmen later in the movie. Levon ends up saving Roth’s life, and much to his own chagrin, Roth thanks him for it.
The full Roth subplot from Levon’s Trade was probably much too bizarre to include in the film. In the novel, Roth and his wife are kidnapped by hitmen looking for Levon, and Roth’s wife is quickly executed. To save his own life, Roth makes a deal with the devil, helping supply the Russians with cheap medications before the epilogue reveals he became a private doctor to the gang and is living a totally new life. It’s a strange subplot for her for sure, but also one of the book’s most entertaining.
A Working Man Tries Too Hard To Repeat The Beekeeper
A Working Man is trying to be something it’s not
The Beekeeper is a wildly entertaining mix of action and comedy and proves Statham is still one of the best action stars working. It makes sense for A Working Man to copy its predecessor’s template, but Levon’s Trade is fundamentally very different from The Beekeeper. The novel has dry humor and quips, but it’s not tongue-in-cheek or campy in the least. It’s a book that features human trafficking, torture and brutal violence, whereas The Beekeeper is a live-action cartoon about Statham’s invincible warrior beating up scammers and evil politicians.
… Levon’s Trade was just the wrong material to try and shape a spiritual sequel to The Beekeeper around.
A Working Man lacks tonal consistency and can feature harsh violence one moment before cutting to a goofy comedy scene the next. It’s a blend that doesn’t work, resulting in the jokes often falling flat; or even leaving a bad taste, considering the subject matter. There was a concerted effort to make the plot more palatable to a mainstream audience, but it was just the wrong material to try and shape a spiritual sequel to The Beekeeper around.
The Film Dropped Levon’s Trade’s Famous Toilet Chapter
A Working Man flushed one of Levon’s Trade’s best pᴀssages
One of the few chapters in Levon’s Trade making an effort to be funny involves Cade kidnapping a barman and tying him to a toilet. There is usually at least one scene in a movie where the hero snatches a character and interrogates/tortures them for information, but the book takes a unique approach. After this goon refuses to talk to Cade, the latter states ominously, “You know why you’re strapped to a toilet? Because I don’t like cleaning up after.“
After this inspires an audible response, the tied man gives Levon the information he needs. Levon’s Trade’s toilet chapter is a blackly comic moment that dodges adding a nasty interrogation, but the movie instead has Statham’s Levon waterboarding the same character for info. It’s the worst possible change, since not only was the toilet chapter one of the most memorable, it could have made a classic moment for the film too.
A Working Man Forces Too Much Action In The Story
Granted, an unusual complaint for any Jason Statham movie
Levon’s Trade felt closer in spirit to Taken than The Beekeeper, and the adaptation suffered for trying to meet the demands of a typical Statham actioner. The novel itself had action, but these were more brutal bursts of violence that ended fast. The most protracted showdown involved a shootout between Levon and two hitmen in the abandoned Florida State Fairgrounds. The movie not only pumps up each setpiece from the book, but it also adds additional sequences like a rather dull motorcycle chase.
A Working Man’s finale is well-staged but also feels hollow, and is far from the groundedness of the source novel.
The book’s tense finale is replaced by an overblown final shootout in A Working Man, where Levon takes on endless waves of gangsters and bikers. It’s all well-staged but also feels hollow and is far from the groundedness of the source material.
A Working Man Drops Levon’s Trade’s Epilogue
Levon’s Trade saw Cade and Merry on the run
A Working Man closes on an upbeat note, where Cade brings Jenny home to her family and rejoins Merry on Gunny’s farm. It doesn’t directly set up a sequel, though there is a suggestion that Russian gangster Symon (Andrej Kaminsky) could come after Cade for basically wiping out his entire family, including his brother and sons. The film drops Levon’s Trade’s epilogue, where Cade and Merry are on the run in the aftermath of his good deeds.
They live under ᴀssumed names, and Merry refuses to get drawn about her past with a nosy teacher. The book also reveals Symon has been killed, possibly for going against the wishes of the Russian brotherhood he was part of by seeking vengeance against Levon. Overall, A Working Man is a decent night at the movies, but its various changes to Levon’s Trade served to make it a lesser story.
Source: Rotten Tomatoes
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Jason Statham
