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The Sun
28-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Sun
Hit me baby one more time
IN A Working Man, audiences are treated to what is essentially a Jason Statham genre piece with the soul of a Home Depot commercial and the moral core of a Liam Neeson phone call. Directed by David Ayer (yes, that Suicide Squad guy) and co-written by none other than Sylvester Stallone, the film attempts to channel gritty man-on-a-mission energy but ends up feeling like a reheated casserole of every action thriller from the past decade, with a touch more plaster dust. Statham stars as Levon, a former military badass who has traded black ops for blueprints. Naturally, the peace does not last long. What follows is a one-man demolition derby of fists, gunfire and furrowed brows. And while it never truly rises above its predictable script or boilerplate direction, it also never fully crashes and burns, either. It just idles there, flexing its muscles. When in doubt, grunt it out A Working Man does not pretend to be high cinema. It knows its audience. It was practically engineered in a lab for anyone who thought The Mechanic needed more drywall or Safe could use a construction site subplot. It is not here to change the game, it is here to play the same game in steel-toe boots. Statham delivers, as always, a rock-solid performance of deadpan intensity. Whether he is drilling nails or drilling bad guys with equal efficiency, his charisma somehow pulls the film through the more uninspired stretches. He grunts, he growls and he walks away from explosions without looking back. Mission accomplished. Unfortunately, everything around him seems to be a few screws loose. The villains are as one-dimensional as an Ikea instruction manual, the supporting cast ranges from 'adequate' to 'where have I seen them before?' and the script, while occasionally sharp, often stumbles on action clichés like a drunk uncle at a barbecue. Lines land with the grace of a thrown cinder block. Gunfights, gut renovations Where A Working Man shines is in its action sequences, which, to be fair, are the main reason anyone bought a ticket. The fight choreography is brutal, the gunplay loud and fast and the body count impressively stacked. Ayer knows how to direct carnage, even if the camera occasionally forgets that editing is a thing. There is also a weird, mildly amusing contrast in tone throughout the movie. One moment it is all blood, bullets and snarling mafiosos, the next it is back to scenes of Statham standing around in a hard hat, casually sipping from a thermos. There is even a warm dinner scene that feels pulled straight from a Hallmark film, sandwiched awkwardly between warehouse massacres. It is that tonal inconsistency that keeps A Working Man from hitting the highs of Statham's better flicks. It is not The Transporter or Wrath of Man. Heck, it does not even match Homefront, which, coincidentally, was also written by Stallone. Instead, this one fits neatly into the 'it's fine' tier of his filmography. Stallone's pen, Ayer's lens, Statham's abs With Stallone co-writing and producing, there is a very specific kind of machismo dripping from every scene. Every line sounds like it was written for the Marlboro man. Every stare-off threatens to trigger a testosterone explosion. But for all its bluster, the movie never feels particularly original. Every twist feels telegraphed, every emotional beat hits like a sledgehammer to a soufflé. Ayer's direction does not help either. While the film maintains a gritty, street-level aesthetic, it lacks the polish or pacing of his earlier work, such as End of Watch or Fury. Here, the camera often lingers too long or cuts too quickly, making some sequences more dizzying than dynamic. The score is thumping and moody, but ultimately forgettable. And yet, something is charming about how earnestly the film tries to deliver a straightforward, meat-and-potatoes action tale. No frills, no flair, just Statham laying waste to every baddie within reach. It may not be smart, but it is committed. Watch it for Statham Ultimately, A Working Man is just aggressively average. It does everything a Statham movie is expected to do, just with less style, less bite and less wit than his greatest hits. There is no reinventing the wheel here, just rotating the tires on a vehicle that has been driving down this road for far too long. Still, for fans of no-nonsense, bicep-flexing, accent-gravelling action flicks, there is enough here to justify a late-night viewing with snacks and lowered expectations. Just remember: it is a Statham movie. That is the best reason to watch it. Do not take it too seriously. Because if you do, you might just start wondering why half the cast looks like they were recruited from a warehouse clearance sale of Eastern European henchmen and why the plot twists are visible from orbit. A Working Man is neither the best nor the worst Statham outing, it is just a workmanlike display of fists, firepower and familiar tropes. Sit back, turn off the brain and enjoy watching Statham do what he does best: look pissed off and hit things really, really hard.
Telegraph
26-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
A Working Man: Jason Statham is wasted in Sylvester Stallone's humourless slaughterfest
A Working Man is a promisingly self-parodic title for a Jason Statham flick, since it basically describes them all. The Transporter? The Mechanic? The Beekeeper? 'Bloke with job' is the whole Statham brand. Scratch beneath the ostensible profession – here, we're talking construction – and we always get a shadowy backstory. It tends to entail mercenary credentials or black ops, and has made him hard as nails. Put it this way: if there's one fellow who could march around Chicago's building sites without even bothering with a hard hat, it's Statham's Levon Cade. You'd think any old script would do, but A Working Man proves otherwise. The film was produced and co-written by Sylvester Stallone – too old for Rambo killing sprees himself by now, but not to knock off cloyingly earnest dialogue on demand. ('I hurt, too,' Levon gruffly tells his tweenage daughter when the subject of her late 'mom' comes up.) Levon faces a Taken-style dilemma when his young colleague Jenny (Arianna Rivas), whose parents (Michael Peña, Noemí González) are his paymasters, is trafficked into sex slavery on a night out. It's been years since he last buckled up on a mission: 'That's not who I am any more,' he explains, before any such scruples vanish in a nanosecond and he goes after the culprits, depraved Russian mafiosi adhering to the so-called 'vory v zakone' code of criminal conduct. What we get henceforth is just your standard grim-faced beat-em-up, barely leavened with a sense of humour, unless you count Jason Flemyng's flamboyant kingpin (first line: 'Vhat em I dyoooing hia??') and David Harbour as a blind weapons expert who has a cache of machine guns lifted directly from Saddam's palace. The fetishising of military hardware, as ever with director David Ayer (Fury, Suicide Squad) is absolutely shameless – the entire opening credits sequence is straight-up war porn. The film uses its human-trafficking angle as an alibi for generic slaughter, while inevitably refusing to delve into the ramifications of that theme, especially for Jenny, a cipher of a character it tries to pretend is no damsel. It's never that deep: Statham just pulverises dozens of goons, many with his bare fists, though he also enjoys the Bluetooth scope Harbour has custom-fitted to an M14, which lets him target baddies he doesn't even have eyes on. Companionable as he always is, the way this flaunts Statham's star power leaves a lot to be desired. He's a totem of meathead carnage, barely sustains a scratch, and doesn't get nearly enough moments of the deadpan bemusement he excels at best. The existence of 11 books in the same series by Chuck Dixon is concerning, particularly if Ayer stays attached and the franchise takes off, like The Equalizer did for Denzel Washington. Statham should be for us all, not just angry dads with NRA memberships. 15 cert, 116 min. In cinemas from March 28
The Guardian
05-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Old Guy review – Christoph Waltz is grumpy hitman on verge of retirement in action comedy
Action legend Simon West (the director of Con Air, the first Lara Croft and The Mechanic) has put together a pretty moderate comedy-thriller with screenwriter Greg Johnson; the collective star power in its (undoubtedly) impressive cast isn't quite strong enough to make it come alive. It is set in Belfast and Northern Ireland — perhaps because of production funding requirements. There is a slightly weird moment in which Lucy Liu's character, speaking from a bar in London's Soho, says wistfully of Belfast: 'I've always wanted to go there … it's got a great music scene.' Perfectly true, of course, but there is something rather autopilot about the way she delivers the line. Christoph Waltz plays an ageing and dissolute hitman called Danny Dolinski whose trigger finger is seizing up with arthritis, so his exasperated handler tells him he has to retire, but before that, he must mentor a new, up-and-coming assassin called Wihlborg, played by Cooper Hoffman, who is an uptight, no-drinking-and-smoking gen Z-er. Together, they must go out on a job to whack a certain someone on a Northern Irish golf course, but grumpy Danny figures he will do the killing while this young upstart can just watch how a master does the business. And along the way they run into Danny's friend Anata (Liu) for whom Danny may have feelings. Old Guy is always acted with commitment and Hoffman shows he has the chops for a bigger role (his management may be minded to get him to bulk up in the gym for mainstream leading men parts). Three big names doing a professional job … but the target isn't found. Old Guy is in UK and Irish cinemas from 7 March and on digital platforms from 10 March.
