Well I mistakenly assumed due to Jason Statham and Jason Flemyng's involvement that this was a Guy Richie film. Easy mistake to make, it was violent and had the cast he reuses, but it was not in any way, shape, or form connected to the famed director.
It was just as well really, or else I'd have thought he's lost his spark.
The movie follows a construction worker, Levin, who used to be SAS or something similar, who is on the warpath as his employer and friend's daughter is kidnapped when she goes clubbing with her friends. He'd told the 19 year old he had her back and was going to keep that promise while also protecting his own daughter.
Filled with the usual Statham theatrics, he beats up a bunch of people, seems unbeatable, and pretty much immortal to be honest. It's the same thing as in most of his films, just different setting and plot. Not a bad thing for Statham, he was good as always, it's just the rest of it really let it down.
The girl went from fearful to vengeful super quick and while I admire her survival skills, I really don't think a smart mouth and baiting your captors is the way to go. The Irish fella who was pretending not to be Irish rather badly at the end when Levin came in could have just shot her while he was coming for her because he knew all was lost anyway and their client was dead so didn't need her anymore. You could see he wanted to. I almost think if he had that could have justified a 2 hour movie as I would have liked to see his rage as he realised all was lost.
It was a slow film with minimal plot. Just enough happened to spur Levin into various forms of violence, but none of it was worth thinking about. I was on my phone or Switch a good 80% of the movie and even debated abandoning it completely. It wasn't me who put it on, but as I wanted to continue with family film night I stayed and rolled my eyes. So this is great if you want a bit of violent background noise, but not great if you want something to watch.
The actual contents of the film could easily have been condensed down into a 90 minute movie, that would have made it bearable to be honest, but alas, 2 hours long it was, and it bordered 2 hours of torture for me and the characters.
Statham, brilliant as always, was let down by shoddy writing. You could see the big names in the film didn't really wanna be there. David Harbour for example was 100% only in it for the payday as a blind man who barely had any lines. Clearly riding off the success of Beekeeper they thought this was an easy win but they were wrong.
So on that note, I'm giving A Working Man a 4/10. I didn't really enjoy it at all. Mindless violence is one thing, but a choppy plot trying to pose as an illegal trafficking awareness issue was the limit for me. I would have scored it less but I must admit, some scenes did entertain me. Background fodder only for this one I'm afraid. If I ever even bother to think about it again...
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