A Working Man - Jason Statham deconstructs villains again

The typical Jason Statham movie character – muscular, resourceful, drily humorous – could probably carve an army into mincemeat using a few odds and ends nicked from the local Hobbycraft. In A Working Man, Statham’s second collaboration with writer-director David Ayer (The Beekeeper), the star defends the helpless with pickaxes and sledgehammers. And then he gets really violent.

This time, Statham (Killer Elite, Ocean’s Eleven) portrays Levon (rhymes with “heaven”) Cade, an ex-SAS operator making a meagre living as a construction manager. Though the film’s graphic-novelish opening credits (burnt orange, smoke, stuntmen) and snide remarks from other characters indicate that Cade hasn’t recovered from battlefield concussions and PTSD, the star's performance, minimalist in the style of Steve McQueen, suggests that grief could be his deepest problem.

Cade is a widower, of course. Grown women in action thrillers are either an encumbrance or pointedly absent. Even so, Cade is a crusading rescuer of decent American womanhood. After his construction boss’s teenage daughter, Jenny (Arianna Rivas), disappears on a girls’ night out, Cade’s mission – taking its cue from the Liam Neeson vehicle Taken and assorted Q-Anon delusions – is to protect this suburban princess from sex traffickers.

The culprits? “Russians!” snarls Statham in his distinctive raspy voice. A Working Man's distinct Cold War sensibility comes from both its source material, a novel by Chuck Dixon, and its hard-punching screenwriters, Ayer and Sylvester Stallone. With these credentials, the film might have been a shrewdly entertaining genre workout, if it weren’t such a meandering tale. (Pictured below: Jason Statham)

When Cade goes undercover as a drug dealer, it’s mainly an excuse to meet hilariously costumed villains in their wicketty wack lairs. One henchman swans about in a sequinned topcoat suitable for your nan's night at the opera. The featureless setting is possibly Chicago, but cast and credits suggest that A Working Man toils somewhere in the UK.

A Russian mobster’s feckless son, said to be in hiding, holds court in his favourite nightclub, a garish dance club monstrosity that shouldn’t be all that hard to find, and the leering creep who kidnapped Jenny hosts fancy-dress casino nights at his run-down country house. The criminal nightlife looks like raucous fun until the guests, dressed in vintage tuxedos and flapper dresses, are forced to flee when Cade shows up. 

For action-movie fans who rely on Statham (and Neeson and Gerard Butler) for an explosive movie fix, A Working Man might be enough. But this isn't Statham or Ayer's flash-bang best. It's hard work, lugubrious and solemn. Jason Flemyng, like Statham a Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels alumnus, appears briefly as a gangster, and Rivas makes a strong impression as Jenny by lashing out at every opportunity. “I’m in the business of pleasure, not in the business of surgery,” whinges one kidnapper after she has a go at him.

Late in the film, Cade turns to an old war buddy/armaments collector (David Harbour) and gets himself properly gunned up. “Remember this one?” asks Harbour, fingering an M-14. “Wish I didn’t,” sighs Statham, like he’s getting the shivers. Someone at least had the wit to score this man-to-man encounter with a few chords of Spanish guitar music. Maybe it was writer-director Ayer sneakily commenting on the allure of righteous violence. Or maybe he's merely fetishising its deadly tools. Either way, A Working Man throws everyone, including Statham and the audience, into the line of fire. It’s not good, but it’s contagious.

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