A Working Man – Review

Cert – 15, Run-time – 1 hour 56 minutes, Director – David Ayer

When his boss’s (Michael Peña) daughter (Arianna Rivas) is kidnapped, construction leader Levon Cade (Jason Statham) brings out his former royal marine skills to find her amongst Chicago’s organised crime scene.

Jason Statham has a pickaxe, and a sack of gravel, and a bucket of nails, and a gun. All of this applies to the first proper scrap in the opening ten minutes of A Working Man, Statham’s second team-up with director David Ayer following last year’s The Beekeeper. Unfortunately, none of it applies to the remaining 106-minutes as any form of creativity when it comes to fights and kills is thrown out of the window in exchange for near-impossible-to-follow punches and shootouts.

Levon Clade (Statham) may seem like a financially-struggling construction leader, however his past lies as a former royal marine. His work is quickly pushed aside, alongside any opportunity it has to add some fun to the action scenes throughout, as his past takes centre stage in the search for the kidnapped daughter (Arianna Rivas) of his bosses (Michael Peña, Noemi Gonzalez). However, in order to find Jenny, Levon must make his way through the shady world of Chicago’s organised crime scene. But why has Jenny been taken, and by who? Was she specifically targeted, mistaken for someone else? Is she going to be trafficked, held for ransom? And who actually wants her? It seems that Ayer’s screenplay, co-written with Sylvester Stallone – there are a number of action scenes and dialogue throughout which clunkily scream later-Stallone, think Rambo: Last Blood, as if the actor was envisioning himself in the lead role at some point or another – doesn’t actually know and is coming up with answers as it goes along.

It makes for a long near-two-hour run-time, which feels closer to three. We jump from location to location, gangster to gangster to mobster without any full idea of what’s going on. Yet, the framework still feels entirely familiar. Of course, Taken and its various copycat flicks come to mind. Yet, A Working Man seems to want to add even more layers to the maze-like hierarchy which Levon has to shoot his way through in order to find Jenny – wanting to keep a family together, whilst we see him early on struggling with custody of his young daughter (Isla Gie) after the death of his wife, with his violent past being used against him. Every times someone who seems like a key figure is taken down, at least two more crop up in their place. It leads to a scramble for screen-time amongst multiple villains without it always being clear how they link together.

It leads to an unnecessarily bulky film which becomes as frantic as the editing itself. The way the action in particular is cut means that almost none of it can be properly seen, so we’re simply watching a series of dimly-lit flashes with a barrage soundtrack of bullets, thuds and glass shattering. Yet, somehow it combines to increase the blandness of the film due to its overfamiliarity. We’ve seen all the characters, not helped here by a series of overexaggerated performances, and situations countless times before.

The entertainment factor of The Beekeeper isn’t present because A Working Man appears to not be aware of the potential it has for some madness, or simply fun. It treats itself with thorough seriousness and a stony-faced expression from start to finish, creating almost a barrier between it and the audience. The film simply forms itself early on as an overfamiliar slog confused as to quite where it stands with its many antagonists and in serious need of some self-awareness and just a simple sense of fun.

There’s little excitement of fun to be found in A Working Man’s too-serious-for-its-own-good demeanour. An overfamiliar slog with far too many antagonists to keep track of it leads to a bland jumble in need of some self-awareness and humour.