Working Man, A (United States, 2025)

If John Wick or Payback is a gourmet burger, A Working Man is a Big Mac. A little tacky and neither nutritious nor memorable, the fast food staple nevertheless satisfies a craving while offering a helping of ephemeral, guilty pleasure. This film delivers what it promises – full stop. It features Jason Statham at his stoic best, mowing his way through an array of low-level bad guys as he gradually moves his way up the food chain. It’s a time-honored approach and with old-school filmmakers like director/co-writer David Ayer and co-writer/producer Sylvester Stallone contributing to the movie’s DNA, it maintains an ‘80s vibe.

There are two Jason Stathams. I prefer the wisecracking one, whose barbed one-liners drip with sarcasm. That’s not who we get in A Working Man. This is instead the inscrutable version who rarely speaks and lets his physicality do the talking. Statham doesn’t have the musculature of Schwarzenegger, the brutality of Stallone or Seagal, or the athleticism of Van Damme, but his no-nonsense, blue collar approach to violence has earned him a place alongside them as one of the newest members of the action hero pantheon. (He’s more of a modern-day Charles Bronson.)

The premise is basic: Statham’s Levon Cade, a Royal Marines commando-turned-construction foreman, unwraps his old persona when Jenny Garcia (Arianna Rivas), the daughter of his good friend and boss, Joe (Michael Pena), is kidnapped. Although initially reluctant to embark on the rescue mission, claiming he’s “no longer that man,” Levon eventually relents and starts his hunt by tracking down low-level members of the responsible party who (typically as a result of post-mortem clues) lead him to higher-level targets. Up the pyramid he goes, pissing off bosses in Chicago’s Russian Mafia Brotherhood, including the likes of Wolo Kolisnyk (Jason Flemyng), his son Dimi (Maximilian Osinski), and the rather scary Symon Kharchenko (Andrej Kaminsky).

Although overlong and littered with unnecessary exposition and dead-end subplots, A Working Man functions primarily as an opportunity for Statham to do what he does best: kill bad guys while taking a licking himself. The storyline, which Stallone adapted from the Chuck Dixon novel Levon’s Trade, avoids several seemingly obligatory action movie cliches (the child-in-danger one being the most obvious). One could argue, however, that the movie would have been leaner, meaner, and better paced had several secondary characters, including Levon’s daughter, Merry (Isla Gie), and blind former compatriot, Gunny Lefferty (David Harbour), been excised. Their inclusion seems designed with the aim of introducing them so they can be used in potential sequels. (Dixon has written 12 books in the series to-date.)

Although many of the film’s characters are generic, including the deviant played by Statham’s old buddy, Jason Flemyng (the two appeared in the early Guy Ritchie films, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch), one merits mention. Dutch (Chidi Ajufo) has a warped sense of humor and follows a code of honor; he proves to be a more interesting foil for Levon than the sadistic gangster-types running around trying to kill him.

Ayer’s direction is uncharacteristically sloppy. Understanding that Statham is the draw, he makes sure to give his star the requisite number of close-ups. But the fight scenes are poorly lit and sometimes hard-to-follow and the only way we figure out the movie is set in Chicago is by the frequently skyline shots and the “Illinois” license plates of the cars – the sense-of-place couldn’t possibly be more nonspecific.

I can’t recommend this movie to everyone but that probably goes without saying. Those who want something substantial in their cinematic diet may recoil from what A Working Man offers. But for anyone whose primary concern is to see the righteous slaughter of bad guys at the hands of the noble Statham, A Working Man doesn’t disappoint.

Working Man, A (United States, 2025)