A Working Man (2025)
Directed by: David Ayer
Premise: Based on the novel Levon’s Trade by Chuck Dixon. The foreman of a construction site (Jason Statham) is hired to find a teenager who was abducted by human traffickers.
What Works: A Working Man stars Jason Statham, was co-written by Sylvester Stallone, and directed by David Ayer and the movie plays to their strengths. Statham has made a career of playing likeable tough guys with a strict ethical code and that public persona complements Stallone’s sensibilities for populist heroes. David Ayer is known for his action and street crime films such as Suicide Squad and End of Watch which often feature colorful criminal characters and that’s the case here. A Working Man is mostly realistic but it has a slightly stylized comic book feel; the costumes in particular have a style and flair that’s not quite realistic and gives the material some character.
What Doesn’t: A Working Man retreads a lot of familiar scenarios and plot beats of other Statham, Stallone, and Ayer films and the tropes are not done very well. Statham plays the same kind of hero that he’s played repeatedly for two decades. He has no vulnerability. Statham’s character never loses a fight or even gets injured and he always makes the right decisions. The villains are cartoonish Russian mobsters who have become the bad guy de jure of recent Hollywood action movies. The set pieces range from mediocre to clumsy; the camerawork is awkward and the fights and shootouts are not staged in a way that creates much excitement. The sound is inconsistent; the dialogue is sometimes hard to hear due to the way the soundtrack is mixed. The story is bogged down with too many characters. Statham’s character uncovers a human trafficking ring and a complex web of interconnected organizations including mobsters and drug dealers with their own internal power struggles. While the complexity is admirable, nothing actually comes of it. The end of the movie is just a bunch of bad guys getting shot. There is no payoff to all the scheming. The lack of storytelling economy drags out the movie. A Working Man is too long. For a story of a woman who must be rescued from traffickers, A Working Man lacks any sense of urgency. It’s remarkably slow with protracted scenes of Statham’s character sitting around and talking. Compare the static nature of A Working Man to the momentum of the original Taken and the problem becomes clear. For an action movie, A Working Man is very boring.
Bottom Line: A Working Man is a below average Jason Statham action picture. It has some colorful villains but the movie feels like it’s going through the motions and lacks excitement.
Episode: #1042 (April 6, 2025)