Let’s say you are watching Jason Statham’s new action masterpiece “A Working Man.” In that case, you should go in knowing that the movie’s plot, or lack thereof, isn’t particularly important. I hope you did not maintain any expectations of dramatic depth or realism either. I chuckled with a couple of acquaintances right before my screening started that when it comes to Statham, he has a specific accent, and that is just ‘Statham.’ His movies are no different. Statham’s action films nonchalantly use and abuse the film industry norms to the extent that one will miss the glaring reality of a 2×4 coming straight for your chin if they criticize his films for copying “John Wick” or some Michael Bay joint.
Due to the incorporation of distinct fragments that build towards the creation of one’s personal action flick, achieving the epitome of being gifted an action star is tantamount. Statham has done it. One can only assess Statham’s efforts against the boundary he constructed for himself.
Nothing out of the ordinary occurs in “A Working Man,” his second outing in concert with David Ayer after the delightfully ludicrous assassin revenge flick “The Beekeeper.” In this movie, like the last, Statham embodies a long-dormant action hero. In this case, he is a foreman called Levon Cade with a construction company owned by a caring Joe Garcia (Michael Peña). His military background is of no concern to anyone on this site. It is a tragic backstory and is told through an animated montage that contains a cement truck whose mixer is shaped like a grenade. However, his serene existence is disrupted by child trafficking done for a Russian mobster to Joe’s daughter, Jenny (Arianna Rivas). Although Joe offers a fortune to Levon to get Jenny back, for Levon, this is a question of principle rather than money. Promises have to be kept.
Delving deeper into the film’s complicated plot now would be futile. However, here are a few parting thoughts. As a retired army officer, Levon hopes to win custody of his gifted daughter Merry (Isla Gie) from his spiteful father-in-law. On top of this, that fatherly spirit serves as another motivation for him wanting to help Jenny reconnect with her Joe. Following the “John Wick” style of worldbuilding, the Russian mobsters in this film differ from ordinary lowlife drug lords. They each have their own hidden set of rules, intricate systems and powerful interrelations within—and a handy cleaning service for body disposals. While Levon is busy hiding his daughter and searching for Jenny, these mobsters are busy trying to figure out why Levon is stalking them.
Though these subplots exist to tease a potential sequel, they take a backseat because Statham is the plot. Sure, Levon goes through the motions of searching for Jenny – some torture here, some subterfuge there – but when he locates his quarry, a lost Russian playboy named Dimi, there is no dramatic tension to the boilerplate script from A Chuck Dixon novel. There is very little Statham, which somehow resorts to beating the hell out of anything in front of him.
Statham, as expected, does not hold back. He had previously established unflattering stereotypes of American social strata, and here he furthers his examination. In a less-than-flattering hotel, Levon makes it his headquarters. He tortured some Russian bad guy in a gilded mansion and then goes into a midwestern roadside dive, where he participates in a violent dance contest set to a Dropkick Murphys’ “The Boys Are Back.” At the end of slaughtering a multitude of unassuming patrons by caveman-style elbowing them in the head, the roadside bar’s owner, Dutch, takes Levon’s hand and, with glee, walks off, saying, “Look at them bricks! You are no cop; you’re a working man.”
That ridiculous one-liner is, of course, partially scripted to produce laughter, but also alludes to the film’s target audience.
What I have noticed is that fewer movies are set in the Midwest, and even fewer feature what could be characterized as a blue-collar hero. And while there aren’t exactly deep political themes here, Statham certainly isn’t leading a class revolution. It’s certainly something to behold, Statham, somewhat of a Brit, playing a working-class “American” battling Russian powers, which, in a way, caricatures the conflict as a global struggle.
Even though Statham does his part effectively, Ayer’s visual language is a collage of different styles that do not converge. He can make a heroic vision the worst type of backlit and overexposed lighting that is possible, and did so in half of the shots. In Chicago, the audience can see more skyline inserts than they can hear the characters speak. There are always nods to Chicago in the film, but there’s also no central location. For instance, why is the wind stirring up a tempest during one of the nighttime scenes? Because this is the Windy City, duh! I also do not usually go out of my way to make sure that a film is geographically coherent when it comes to the grid of a city, and especially when it comes to shooting, you get what you can when and where you can. But if you have lived in Chicago and know how it looks and feels, Ayer’s cuts are very jarring. How can William drive from a suburb to the CBD and then to Joliet’s woodlands? It’s a fairly obvious example of movie magic, albeit the constant cutting from suburban to urban Chicago in aid of a mobland narrative always invites comparisons to the other Chicago action movie, ‘Next of Kin’.
But Ayer gets that Statham’s target audience is captivated by his movies, so now we can understand why he has provided so much room for heroism in this case.
Along with his over-the-top and bone-crunching fighting style, the deadpan quips, the illogical story, and now, the average man being heroic, is what makes Statham one of the few peak-of-the-pyramid stars in action cinema. It doesn’t make a difference because if “The Meg,” “Wrath of Man,” or “The Beekeeper” proved anything, it’s that there is no limit to how ridiculous the film gets. For Statham, everything is hit-line.
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