For starters the chief writer on this film was none other that Sylvester Stallone and well, I didn't know that until after the movie was done but now, it seems so evident that someone like him would have been involved in the creation of this.
Statham films are dependable and amusing, often unintentionally so but this one seems to exaggerate his usual character that he plays in every single film that he is in. I love that after all of these years Jason has made absolutely zero effort to adapt his accent to every new place that he happens to live in the world, namely the fact that most of his films he is a US citizen but somehow manages to hang on to his Cockney accent.
If Statham is in a movie, he is going to be a brooding bad ass type of person that has a "very specific set of skills" but he tries to keep these skills a secret until he is forced to reveal his true colors because of some outside force.
He might be a mechanic that just wants to live out his days in peace, or a retired police officer that doesn't actually want to be involved in Death Races but just happens to excel at it, or maybe he is just a bee farmer who once again, just wants to be left alone but if you poke the bear enough, he is going to come and get you.
In A Working Man Jason is, you guessed it, a man who works! He has a construction job and he is very good at it. He is admired by his coworkers and lives a simple life all the while keeping it a secret that he is special forces or something and can beat the hell out of 10 men at once no problem.
Of course we need more character development than that so he also has an estranged relationship with family members and a small child that he treats like a little princess and tries very hard to prevent her from figuring out what daddy is actually like.
It's like Stallone had a checklist and got through every major one of them and said, "ok, now lets get some cliche one-liners in there and some kicking and explosions."
He gets wrapped up in some sort of kidnapping of a friend's daughter and he quietly goes about solving this on his own. At this point I was wondering around my house doing other stuff so the real story here isn't very well-known to me but trust me, you are not missing out on anything by not really knowing all the players in the game.
The actors that are playing the baddies are mostly terrible actors and actresses who deliver their lines in just cringe fashion with a lot of unnecessary swearing and this is most likely because Sly Stallone has a vocabulary consisting of about 900 words and he did the best he could with it.
But at some point we need to have some absolutely wild armaments brought into the picture and who better to be the supplier of these things than an extremely well connected ex-soldier who is now blind.
I mean why wouldn't a blind guy be completely capable of gun running?
We also have very silly villains who operate out of completely ridiculous clubs and have a hierarchy that consists of "if you can beat up everyone in this room, we will do business with you!" And of course Jason has no issue completing this request.
At one point Statham walks into a biker bar and meets the leader who sits on a throne made of motorcycle parts. ooof, that is just perfect.
This film is so campy and stupid that it kind of makes me angry that things like this are so guaranteed to make money. This $40 million project ended up making $100 million at the box office and probably more than that once streaming revenue is calculated in.
This is why we cannot have nice things. Trash like this makes a windfall and in the meantime good films are just passed over and often never even make it into the cinemas. I guess this is just the world we live in now.
Should I watch it?
This movie is exactly the same as every other Jason Statham movie that has ever been made so there really isn't much reason to do so.
I would love to see Statham perhaps prove to us that he actually can act but much like Adam Sandler, The Rock, and John Cena, there is no financial incentive for them to do so. Just like Mark Hammill drunkenly pronounced at a Star Wars presser, "It doesn't matter if it is any good, it only matters if it makes money."
Well this and nearly the entire filmography of Statham has made money, all while never even trying to do anything original.
You can legally stream this on Amazon, MGM+ and Fubo currently. it is available for rent on just about everything else too
