A WORKING MAN -- Ayer/Statham Collab Requires Performance Review

Review by Daniel Lima

At a time where the world seems to be getting worse by day, a new collaboration from David Ayer and Jason Statham seems like a heavenly gift. Yet as much as I craved another story about a violent macho man beating all of America's problems to death, I did worry that A Working Man might be too abrasive, too noxious for someone like me to enjoy. I did not anticipate an utter lack of any animating idea whatsoever.

Statham is a retired commando working a humble construction job, just a regular blue collar, punch card roughneck looking to win custody of his daughter. When his bosses' daughter goes missing, he has to fall back on his particular set of skills to get her back from a nefarious criminal cabal.

The best examples of this particular male power fantasy use the familiar set up as a foundation for unique idiosyncrasies. Colorful performances, a distinct cast of characters, clever dialogue, the nature of the threat, the flavor of action, all go a long way in making something that could be generic stand out. Ayer and Statham already accomplished this last year with The Beekeeper.

To give them some credit, A Working Man is a functional film. Statham's gruff, direct persona has served him well through his career, and he is as able as ever to put on the air of a working stiff. So long as he's bouncing from one violent confrontation to another, manhandling and threatening and brutally executing odious people with ease, his blunt force charisma is enough to power the film.

It is a shame, then, that this does not make up most of the film. About halfway through, Statham’s character begins to get more methodical in his search, trading the fun scenes of him interrogating criminals through creative means for going undercover and laying low. This gives more time to develop the many antagonists, but it also adds a lot of time where the star of the show is entirely passive or off screen, making it incredibly hard to stay emotionally invested. As the story meanders further away from that core appeal of Statham bulldozing his way through bad guys, it becomes both less exciting and harder to follow.

This lack of narrative focus feeds into a hazy sense of thematic purpose. In The Beekeeper, Statham starts off attacking a local criminal operation, but progresses through higher and higher echelons of power, tying his personal vendetta into a crusade to rid American society of deeply rooted evils... that happen to be a litany of right-wing grievances. The clear escalation within the storytelling feeds into the animating thesis of the film: moral rot flows downstream of power and privilege.

Here, there are so many different figures representing so many points of the criminal ladder, it’s impossible to parse who exactly is the ultimate bad guy. If the powerful people at the top are the worst of the bunch, why does Statham spend so little time confronting them? If it’s the underlings perpetrating the crimes their bosses order, is that not antithetical to the supposed working-class ethos of the character? What are we to make of the drug peddler who earns some respect just because he served in the military? As charged as the politics of that previous film may have been, it presented a neatly defined threat, and an overriding sense of purpose and import to the quest for revenge. That gets lost in the shuffle here, and it makes for a less compelling movie.

I wish I could say that the film is elevated by the action, or the supporting ensemble, or the dialogue, but these only impress in fits and spurts. There are moments of over-the-top violence, with beautifully explosive squibs sending out clouds of red mists, but the fisticuffs are often too darkly lit and too quickly edited to get a sense of what’s going on. Though there’s a handful of fun turns by the likes of Michael Peña and Chidi Ajufo, most of the cast is given precious little material to work with. Most of the best quips can be found in the trailers, and while they’re just as knowingly self-aware in the actual movie, they’re too scattered to leave an impression.

With a leaner story and a clearer vision of who — or what — its hero is fighting against, perhaps the meager boons of A Working Man would be more impactful. As it stands, this is a middling entry into the oeuvres of both its star and director.

A Working Man clocks into theaters 3/28.

Rating: 3/5