David Ayer has had a Rocky career in filmmaking over the last fifteen or twenty years or so. He’s had a few fantastic films like End of Watch and Tank, but not totally his fault he has also had The Suicide Squad and a few other stinkers in his filmography. He has found new hope for his directing career with his collaboration with Jason Statham on The Beekeeper last year. His latest movie with the British action star is A Working Man. The title says it all.

Based on the 2014 novel by Chuck Dixon, Levons Trade, the premise of A Working Man is that a man who was once a decorated British military soldier is now working for a family owned construction company. He enjoys his job, but when his boss’s daughter is kidnapped, he feels bad about it. He reverts back to his old skill set while he was in the military and decides to take things into his own hands. He starts to search for the kidnappers  but instead fines a web of drug dealers and human traffickers. Stratham goes full on badass like fans would expect.

Statham is well known for his roles in Snatch and Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, but he parlayed those roles into an entire career of action films. Crank, The Mechanic and The Transporters movies have highlighted his unique skill set very well. Lately, though, he has found a new Muse in Ayer. Together, they have gotten back to what both of them do well. That’s character driven action films. This is a good film for both of them to get into the groove of what they are both famous for. I want to see more of their collaborations in these specific types of films.

As always, the action and fight scenes are hot and heavy in a Statham movie. A couple stood out to me specifically. A brawl in a biker bar was pretty enjoyable, and the fight sequence towards the end of the film had a lot of blood and as well as broken bones. A close quarters fight scene in a van was particularly fun because of the characters Statham was beating up. A couple of sequences in the trailers didn’t give away all the action, which was good. Those were mainly in the first act of the film.

As mentioned, the script was based on a novel by Chuck Dixon, a fantastic novelist and comic book writer, specifically on Batman comics. Sylvester Stallone wrote the script with the help of Ayer. They use a lot of clunky dialogue Stallone is familiar with from his Expendables franchise. The less said about those movies, the better. He had Statham in a few of them, so the connection with him makes sense.  Statham is famous for drab humor or one-liners similar to Arnold Schwarzenegger, but even can’t make this dialogue believable. Most of the bad dialogue comes from one note villains, though, so that makes sense. Villains don’t usually have smart things to say. The script is the weakest part of this adrenaline fueled action-packed film.

Ayer has a good reputation for working with actors, so he gets a lot of good character actors to work on his movies with him. The supporting cast this time around includes Michael Pena as the grieving father of the kidnapped girl, David Harbour, as a blind ex-military man who served with Statham’s character, he is a mentor and has a few funny lines, and Ariana Rivas as the kidnapped daughter. She has a few moments to shine in some of the action sequences. She surprised me with her ability to do the action scenes. There are too many villains to  mention, but none of them stood out to me as giving good performances. They just came across as pretty dumb and dare I say it, expendable for Statham to do his thing.

A Working Man was another decent vehicle for Stathem to do his thing, which is kiss ass and take names. He is so at home as this type of character he’s played so many times before. I’m not complaining because these types of action films are a necessity or as a counter programming to other types of movies out theaters. Ayer knows his lane  and sticks to it. The script and clunky dialogue are a bit sad to report, but it’s par for the course with Stallone involved. Overall, it’s an okay movie. I prefer The Beekeeper more, though personally. 

3 stars

Dan Skip Allen