Film Yap is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
I’m a fan of and an apologist for writer/producer/director David Ayer and star Jason Statham and therefore I was super-stoked when the two collaborated on last year’s action throwback “The Beekeeper.” I enjoyed that bit of dumb fun well enough that I was also excited for “A Working Man” (now playing in theaters).
Statham stars as Levon Cade, a combat veteran-turned-construction worker who’s employed by Chicagoland developers Joe (Ayer regular Michael Peña) and Carla Garcia (Noemi Gonzalez) and buddies with their college-aged daughter Jenny (Arianna Rivas). Levon’s got a grade schooler daughter of his own named Merry (Isla Gie). He’s in the midst of a custody battle for the girl with her grandfather Dr. Jordan Roth (Richard Heap).
Levon’s called into action when Jenny’s abducted by human traffickers Viper (Emmett J. Scanlan) and Artemis (Eve Mauro) during a night out on the town with girlfriends. These scumbags are at the beck and call of Dimi Kolisnyk (Maximilian Osinski), the black sheep son of notorious Russian mobster Wolo (Statham’s old Guy Ritchie running buddy Jason Flemyng). In attempting to rescue Jenny, Levon runs afoul of fellow Russkie gangster Symon Kharchenko (Andrej Kaminsky) and his gaudy track suit-sporting sons Danya (Greg Kolpakchi) and Vanko (Piotr Witkowski) as well as ex-military man-turned-meth dealer Dutch (Chidi Ajufo).
Levon’s strongest ally is his blind brother-in-arms Gunny Lefferty (David Harbour, another Ayer vet), who offers to be his friend’s weapon sommelier (think Q from the Bond flicks, Micro from “The Punisher,” Enrique from “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” or Peter Serafinowicz’s character from “John Wick: Chapter 2”) and to look after Merry.
“A Working Man” is an adaptation of Chuck Dixon’s novel “Levon’s Trade” by Ayer and Statham’s fellow “Expendable” Sylvester Stallone. (Sly previously penned the 2013 Statham flick “Homefront.”) You likely already know if this particular brand of hokum is for you or not. It’s “Dad Action” porn in the mold of “Taken” with a much higher body count (this might as well have been retitled “Jason Takes Chi-Town”) that’ll get plenty of play on TNT between basketball and hockey games.
“A Working Man” would’ve benefitted from being a little more lean (116 minutes is a tad long for this sort of thing), but it’s still plenty mean. It ain’t as good as “The Beekeeper,” but I’m down to see more Ayer/Statham vocation-themed vehicles, i.e. “He’s a lumberjack with an axe to grind” or “They just stole the wrong gardener’s hoe.” Sign me the hell up every day and twice on a sleepy, TNT Sunday afternoon.