A Work­ing Man review – a dire, for­get­table actioner

One has to won­der if Jason Statham ever longs for more. His career as Britain’s pre­mière Hard Man export began back in the late 90s when he first met Guy Ritchie, and has only gone from strength to strength in the sub­se­quent years, spawn­ing the suc­cess­ful Trans­porter fran­chise as well as a recur­ring role in the Fast and Furi­ous series. Devot­ed dis­ci­ples of Statham obvi­ous­ly know his best per­for­mance of all time was as the per­for­ma­tive­ly macho intel­li­gence agent Rick Ford in Paul Feig’s Spy (one won­ders why we got a sequel to A Sim­ple Favour before we got Spy 2) but he can gen­er­al­ly be relied upon to bring a bit of rogu­ish charm to what­ev­er sil­ly action film he finds him­self signed on for, whether it’s The Meg or The Bee­keep­er.

But even The Stath seems a bit bored by A Work­ing Man, his sec­ond col­lab­o­ra­tion with David Ayer, from a screen­play writ­ten by Ayer and, er, Sylvester Stal­lone (who worked with Statham on the Expend­ables films). The adap­ta­tion comes from Chuck Dixon’s 2014 nov­el ​‘Levon’s Trade’, which kicked off a suc­cess­ful action thriller nov­el series – it’s safe to assume that A Work­ing Man is intend­ed as the open­er for a new fran­chise – and fol­lows the ex-marine-turned-con­struc­tion-work­er Lev­on Cade, who, per the book’s reviews, ​“Makes Jack Reach­er seem like a cross­ing guard.”

We meet Lev­on as he’s keep­ing his head down. He’s liv­ing in his truck and work­ing as a fore­man for the Gar­cia family’s con­struc­tion com­pa­ny while he fights a messy cus­tody bat­tle with his for­mer father-in-law over his daugh­ter Mer­ry. (In one of the film’s fre­quent expo­si­tion dumps, Lev­on explains his wife killed her­self after strug­gling with depres­sion while he was on a deploy­ment as a Roy­al Marine, and his father-in-law holds him respon­si­ble for her death). Yet Levon’s vio­lent past comes in handy when Jen­ny (Ari­an­na Rivas), the daugh­ter of his employ­ers, is abduct­ed at a bar. The Gar­cias offer Lev­on $70,000 to find her, and he reluc­tant­ly agrees.

But the ter­mi­nal­ly humour­less David Ayer makes a sim­i­lar mis­take with A Work­ing Man as he did with The Bee­keep­er last year (which is get­ting a sequel, by the way) fail­ing to inject any sort of inten­tion­al lev­i­ty into the lead­en plot. There are some deeply hilar­i­ous cre­ative choic­es made, such as cast­ing Statham’s old pal Jason Fle­myng as Russ­ian gang­ster Wolo Kolis­nyk and hav­ing Lev­on lament to his blind friend Gun­ny (David Har­bour) ​“Your eyes…I couldn’t save them” but not a sin­gle comedic moment feels inten­tion­al or know­ing. A Work­ing Man takes itself extreme­ly seri­ous­ly, with its baf­fling human traf­fick­ing plot (are rich young women real­ly the ones most at risk of being sold into sex­u­al slav­ery?) and inter­change­able scenes of Lev­on vio­lent­ly off­ing bad guys only dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed by the one time Lev­on paus­es to make him­self a bagel. A vague attempt is made to make Jen­ny more than a hap­less damsel, but this can’t hide the fact that A Work­ing Man is essen­tial­ly Pierre Morel’s Tak­en by anoth­er name. It’s a tru­ly for­get­table slab of action film­mak­ing with lit­tle respect for its audience’s intel­li­gence or even their time, and one has to hope Ayer and co don’t make good on their threat of pro­duc­ing more.