Cast: Jason Statham, Merab Ninidze, Maximilian Osinski, Cokey Falkow, Michael Peña, David Harbour, Noemi Gonzalez, Arianna Rivas, Emmett J. Scanlan, Eve Mauro
Genre: Action, Thriller
Director: David Ayer
In Irish Cinemas: 28th March 2025
Jason Statham has made a career out of playing a particular kind of action hero—gruff, relentless, and unshakably competent—and A Working Man might be the most distilled version of that formula yet. It’s so purely Statham that it borders on self-parody, an uninspired echo of better films that came before. The plot—a well-worn “one-man army” revenge tale about rescuing a kidnapped girl—borrows liberally from classics like Commando and Taken while blatantly lifting elements from John Wick, most notably in the inclusion of a “weapons sommelier” played by David Harbour. Yet, for all its familiar beats, the film never finds a pulse. It’s a Statham movie boiled down to its absolute essence—so much so that it feels utterly flavourless.
On paper, Statham is playing a man named Levon Cade. Still, he’s playing the same Statham archetype he always does: an unflappable bruiser with a murky military past and an accent that oscillates between Essex and Beverly Hills. His mission? Tear through an army of forgettable henchmen in the most mechanical way possible. If the title sounds generic, it fits with the actor’s long-running trend of job-based movie names—The Transporter, The Mechanic, The Beekeeper. The latter, infamous for its groan-worthy “To bee or not to bee” line, was directed by David Ayer, who returns here to helm A Working Man, adapting Chuck Dixon’s novel Levon’s Trade with a script co-written by none other than Sylvester Stallone. You’d expect at least a competent thriller, given that much action-movie pedigree. Instead, the result is a halfhearted slog, weighed down by uninspired storytelling, a grimly generic human-trafficking plot, and a lifeless dialogue that barely registers as conversation.
Statham still looks the part—stoic, steely-eyed, his stubble sculpted to perfection. At 57, he’s no longer as spry but still carries an imposing physical presence. The problem is that the film does next to nothing with it. The action feels routine at best and lazy at worst, his supposed ex-Royal Marine expertise amounting to little more than an oddly menacing overpour of maple syrup onto a villain’s pancakes. Every fight scene is predictable, every shootout devoid of tension. Cade moves through the film with the contractual invulnerability of a video game character, never once appearing remotely at risk. The filmmakers seem entirely uninterested in crafting suspense, resulting in an action film with no weight, wit, or urgency.
The editing only amplifies the mess. Fight sequences are butchered by frantic cuts, reducing potentially decent choreography into a choppy, disorienting blur. Structurally, the film was assembled in a rush, with barely any connective tissue between scenes. Subplots appear and vanish without consequence—at one point, Statham meets with his lawyers to discuss custody of his child. This thread is never addressed again, as if even the movie lost interest.
And that, at its core, is the biggest problem: A Working Man is a film that doesn’t care. There’s no compelling reason to invest in the characters, no standout action sequences, no memorable quips to break up the monotony.
Overall: 2/10
Movie Reviewer
