Tremble…Sigh…Wonder…

By James Kenney

Jason Statham has been starring in the same movie for decades. Whether it’s Safe, Beekeeper, The Transporter, The Transporter 2, The Transporter 3, Wrath of Man, The Mechanic, The Mechanic 2 or Redemption, it’s the same basic formula: stoic man with a troubled past, often ex-military, batting his soulful eyes at various people before smashing their skulls into the nearest radiator. And here’s the thing—that’s the good news.

He’s likeable doing the same stuff Steven Seagal did lacking Seagal’s smarm, narcissism and weird phoney-baloney pretentious rants about peace and the ecology. The real Statham nightmare is when Hollywood insists on putting him in big-budget bores like The Expendables or The Meg, where the CGI explosions are huge, and the CGI dialogue is dumb. Statham is much more fun kicking people through car windows in European parking garages.

Luckily, A Working Man, directed by David Ayer, is a return to mid-level Statham, which is exactly where we want him. With films like this and last year’s Beekeeper, also directed by Ayer, it’s like he’s found his groove and plans to stick to it until the apocalypse or his own 75^th birthday, whichever comes first. The movie’s doing surprisingly well at the box office, suggesting Statham may just be on track to claim Liam Neeson’s throne as the aging dude who cranks out anonymous, samey-same action films once or twice a year well into his twilight years. And honestly? That’s a pretty good thing. As Statham was never the great actor Neeson is or can be, it’s way less depressing to see him doing this dumb stuff. As long as he can look soulful and kill people in the name of justice, all is right in the world.

Warning: A Working Man has Sylvester Stallone’s fingerprints all over it. It probably started as a Stallone project a decade ago. Stallone co-wrote the script with David Ayer and produced the film, which feels appropriate, since he also wrote the OK Homefront for Statham a decade ago, a movie with pretty much the exact same premise. Hell, Ayer just directed Statham in Beekeeper—which is, again, pretty much the same film. These chefs have been reheating this chili for a long time.

Stallone is one of those guys who can be either genuinely impressive or hilariously terrible, often within a single line of marble-mouthed dialogue. Fans have to forgive or rationalize a lot—see Cobra if you want pure 80s steroid-driven paranoia, or Get Carter if you want to understand the true depths of disappointment. But just when you’re ready to write him off as a washed-up relic for the 17^th time, he manages a comeback with something like Copland, Rocky Balboa or Tulsa King, where his rise-from-the-ashes talent for reinvention is almost more compelling than the work itself. Stallone’s particular brand of overwrought sentimentality paired with grotesque violence is all over A Working Man. Take, for example, the scene where Statham dispatches a meth dealer in gruesome fashion—a swift, brutal execution that would make the Transporter say “Whoah, too much.” But then, we get a mawkish little extended moment where Statham gives the guy a respectful send-off because, hey, they’re both vets. Ahh, Stallone.

The problem is, Ayer’s endless litany of villains thrown at Statham here does get repetitive, especially since it’s the same thing he did in Beekeeper. And while Jeremy Irons made for a memorably oily villain in that film, the baddie here is just a generic Russian of little note, upset over the death of family members as uninteresting as himself. As for the one famous co-star they were willing to shell out for this time? Michael Peña. And while he’s reliably decent, if not a great on-screen cryer, he’s no Phylicia Rashad, who added a layer of dignity and human-level emoting to Beekeeper.

Still, Ayer has a grizzly sense of pace and baroque humor, which keeps things moving even when the plot feels like a Stallone-shaped wrecking ball on steroids plowing through a mirror-room of clichés. Though I will say, some of the action is almost impossible to see in a theater with too-dim projection, which is where I caught it—and let’s face it, that’s probably 80% of theaters now.

If I had to choose, Beekeeper had better action and a far more streamlined (and humorous) plot, and once Stallone got his big, grizzled paws on A Working Man, you know we’re in for a good 15 pages of sentimental nonsense that Ayer was never going to argue about. And yet… it’s not so bad. It’s Statham doing what he does best—serving as a stand-in for us besotted working stiffs, as he kills rich people, corrupt government officials, criminals, and Russians all for the honest citizens of America. In Beekeeper, he did it in the name of Rashad. Here, he does it for the toughest little girl on earth, who’s kidnapped by vile people but never really abused, just gets muddy and has fun killing a baddie herself at the end with her thighs. Ahh, Stallone.

Still, A Working Man is grizzly fun, the kind of (mostly) unpretentious, bone-crunching action flick that’s hard to resist in these increasingly trying cinematic times. And Statham remains a reliable hero—handsome and human enough in his physique that my wife enjoys watching him snap necks in a way she never did Stallone or Schwarzenegger. When Statham breaks a neck, it’s like Violence-Porn for Women.

Statham’s best genre films for me are still Redemption (Steven Knight), Parker (Taylor Hackford), Wrath of Man (Guy Ritchie), and The Bank Job (Roger Donaldson). Those movies add a little something extra to the formula—whether it’sKnight’s moody erudition, Ritchie’s stylish brutality, or Hackford’s decision to throw the very hot Jennifer Lopez into the mix. But when it comes down to it, A Working Man will do just fine—like a well-worn recliner, it’s comfortable, predictable, and delivers what you came for.

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