A Working Man - Movie Review

The Movie: A Working Man

The Director: David Ayer

The Cast: Jason Statham, Jason Flemyng, Merab Ninidze, Maximilian Osinski, Cokey Falkow, Michael Peña, David Harbour

The Story: Levon Cade left his profession behind to work construction and be a good dad to his daughter. But when a local girl vanishes, he's asked to return to the skills that made him a mythic figure in the shadowy world of counter-terrorism.

The Rating: 5 / 10

The Review:

Jason Staham is definitely a hard working man. He keeps making movies that are basically the same movie just wrapped in a little bit of different packaging and I'm guessing that will continue as long as they keep making money. I actually don't mind this at all because he knows exactly what audiences are looking for and he delivers every single time without having to fit into a franchise or get too crazy with the special effects type stuff. The movies he's starring in these days have firmly planted him in that "man with a particular set of skills" sub genre that Li Neeson once dominated and there's nothing wrong with that.

David Ayers has made some really good movies. End of Watch and Fury are both pretty fantastic and even his Suicide Squad movie is pretty good and I feel is even a bit underrated so I feel like we can trust that anything he's directing will at bare minimum be at least decent and hopefully entertaining. I think with this movie both he and Statham were in a paint-by-numbers mode and just wanted to get this one done and out there without too much hassle. I'm not going to sit here and pick apart this movie, mainly because it's such an easy target and also because it doesn't really matter.

Anyone who goes to watch this movie should already have a reasonable expectation of what to expect and also a built in tolerance for plot holes, unintentional laughs, and maybe even a few cringe worthy moments as well. I did enjoy the action because it's always cool to watch Jason Statham beat people up, stab them, shoot them, and do other types of violent things to them because, in his movies, they always deserve it. The bad guys in this movie are really bad. They're mostly into drugs and human trafficking and caring more about wealth than humanity and they all have no qualms about inflicting violence upon people as well.

One thing that had held true for a couple decades now is that if Hollywood needs someone to play a likable and safe Mexican male character then Michael Peña is pretty much guaranteed to get a phone call. I really don't mind this because he truly is likeble and he always does good work so please keep paying this guy. He's earned it. Arianna Rivas also does a good job with her character who is the reason why Statham's character goes around killing all the bad guys and she also kind of sets things up for potential sequels which I wouldn't really mind. There's a lot of places this story could go moving forward without too much effort. So yeah, why not.