The Gist
An ex-soldier finds himself on a mission to find his boss’s missing daughter.
The Review
Take one of the biggest action heroes in modern cinema, Jason Statham (Hobbs & Shaw) and place him in a film co-written by Oscar winning screenwriter Sylvester Stallone (Rocky) and directed by the brilliant David Ayer (Suicide Squad) and you would expect something brilliant – right?
Sadly though something just doesn’t sit right with A Working Man. Sure once again Statham rises to the occasion and he disposes of every bad guy in sight and having some touching moments with his daughter. But on the flip-side of that the film never really uses the fact that some of the bad guys are actually interesting enough to have some decent back story. Instead they become walking cliches who can’t shoot straight.
Plotwise Statham plays Levon Cade a former Green Beret who while successful in his construction job is living poor as he spends all of his wages on battling his former father-in-law for custody of his daughter
Workwise Cade runs the construction work sites for the successful Joe Garcia (Michael Pena – Ant-Man) and he is such a good boss that if someone from Chicago’s underworld turns up to collect on a debt Cade will send them packing.
Therefore it is no surprise to see Joe hire Cade when his daughter, Jenny (Arianna Rivas – The Harvest), goes missing on a night out with her college friends. As Cade begins investigating he soon traces the disappearance to the Russian Mafia and a dodgy character named Viper (Emmett J Scanlan – Peaky Blinders).
The problem with A Working Man is that just like the bad guys in the film it misses its mark. Yes, the villains in this film seem to never be able to shoot straight even when they have a clean shot. (Perhaps they were taught how to shoot by the Star Wars stormtroopers). The same goes for a majority of the film. This could have been film that had a powerful message about sex trafficking but instead it feels like it takes the easy way out – it even kind of makes light of the situation that Jenny finds herself her in when her captor is going to have his way with her.
The real downside of the film here though is that there are just way too many villians. Many are set up with just a line or two here and there and then become bullet fodder later on. And to be blunt they just get in the way of the most interesting villains, Dimi (Maximillan Osinski – In Time), Viper and Artemis (Eve Mauro – Cypher). Given more screentime and some more characterisation (including a back story) and Artemis could have been one of the most interesting villains to surface on the screen in a long, long time but instead she just becomes another of the film’s walking cliches.
Likewise the film also fails to capitalise on the characters of Tobias (Wayne Gordon – Angel Has Fallen) and Gunny Lefferty (David Harbour – Hellboy). Sure one is a villain and the other is allie to Levon but all three men have a similar past but have all come to very different stations in life. It could have been an interesting to see how they all ended up the way they ended up – and made a powerful statement about how veterans are treated when they return from war. But once again it seems to be blatantly ignored by the screenwriters – which in itself seems strange given the writing skills of Sylvester Stallone and David Ayer.
The best part of A Working Man is definitely Jason Statham himself. Once again he does what he needs to do – he lays waste to all of the bad guys while also sharing some tender moments with his daughter, but even here it feels like Statham just breezes through this movie. He goes from scene to scene on his quest but never once as a member of the audience do you feel like he is in any kind of danger because the film has literally set him up as a character that seems too perfect and too good at what he does.
Hopefully if we do see a follow up to A Working Man we get to see some of Levon vulnerabilities because that would make him seem more human and relatable. It would also be nice to know what happened with the custody court case for his daughter because it was killing me that it was never resolved by the time the credits rolled.
The Verdict
If you are heading to the cinema and just want a dumbed down action flick where the hero lays waste to every villain that stands before him then you will certainly enjoy A Working Man. But if you are searching for an action film with a little more than look elsewhere because this is really The Perfect Statham against the Walking Cliches.
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