A Working Man (based on Chuck Dixon's book Levon's Trade) follows Levon Cade (Jason Statham), a former soldier more than done with War. Nowadays, he wouldn't be caught dead working as a Mechanic. He's instead carved out a life as a construction worker for Joe Garcia (Michael Peña). Unfortunately, this tranquil life on the Homefront vanishes when human traffickers Viper (Emmett J. Scanlan) and Artemis (Eve Mauro) kidnap Garcia’s daughter. She's now in the hands of a powerful branch of the Russian mob led by Symon Kharchenko (Andrew Kaminsky).
Initially, Cade ignores Gracia’s pleas for help. After all, Cade is a single father struggling to get visitation rights to his daughter. Engaging in any violent behavior could jeopardize that relationship. Eventually, though, Cade stops being such a Crank and pledges to get Jenny home Safe. This will include confronting lots of Russian mobster and utilizing all those hand-to-hand combat skills Cade's kept buried for so long. Suddenly, Cade being such a Wild Card is a good thing as the Wrath of Man is unleashed on those Russian gangsters who kidnapped Jenny.
Unexpectedly, it isn't the fight choreographer or Statham that walks away as A Working Man's MVP. Costume designer Tiziana Corvisieri absolutely ate and left no crumbs with this action film's attire. A veteran of John Carney movies, Corvisieri submerges all of A Working Man’s adversaries in delightfully maximalist baddies. One key foe strolls into the climactic battle wearing chain mail armor over his shoulders. Symon Kharchenko always has a golden cane adorned with a skull top. There are also these memorably glistening glittery jackets on two fleetingly seen henchmen who look like if Uncle Fester and Succession’s Cousin Greg lived in an Avenged Sevenfold mosh pit.
Levon Cade executes a rescue mission in a world where smarmy Russian gangsters drape themselves in bucket hats and matching brightly colored suits. Even a briefly seen gangster’s wife has a strikingly cute light purple pilates outfit. If nothing else, A Working Man wrings diverting enjoyment out of simply seeing what maximalist outfit will walk on-screen next. Props to Tiziana Corvisieri for sneaking in outfits sometimes evoking Pedro Almodovar's color schemes and the heightened fashion sensibilities of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. Otherwise, A Working Man is a very formulaic action movie that's way too convoluted for its own good.
Screenwriters Sylvester Stallone and David Ayer (the latter of whom also directs) execute A Working Man with a needlessly complicated second act. This is where the camera focuses on Cade masquerading as a meth dealer. It's all part of a plan to uncover Jenny's kidnappers. These scenes evoke going down so many side missions in a video game that you forget what your initial primary objective was. Listlessly filmed scenes of Cade meeting drug dealers in pancake houses or taping photos of suspects to hotel walls go on forever. This labyrinthine narrative approach is already enough to drain all the tension.
This stretch of A Working Man also carves out time for strangely chillaxed digressions. This includes Cade returning for a laidback chat with fellow veteran Gunny Lefferty (David Harbour). These scenes just further dilute the urgency of getting Jenny back. Puzzlingly, Ayer and Stallone also reveal from the get-go who Jenny’s kidnappers are. This means A Working Man’s central mystery for Cade isn’t very compelling. It’s just a lot of jogging in place before everything reaches an inevitable conclusion.
But movies are often about the journey, not the destination. A deluge of excellent A Working Man action sequences could’ve made these narrative shortcomings a minor foible. Unfortunately, this is a David Ayer directorial effort. The man behind End of Watch, Suicide Squad, and Fury has rarely garnered acclaim for crisply framed and visually absorbing action sequences. Here, the A Working Man fight set pieces underwhelm both in editing and camerawork. Most yawn-worthy, they’re heavily reliant on firearms and bullets flying. When movies boil down to people pulling triggers across the room at each other, things get super tedious super fast.
A Working Man’s violence-heavy sequences can’t hold a candle to other modern action films, like the exceptional fight choreography in Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In. Cade’s sporadic use of torture (like waterboarding) feels out of place in a movie so cartoony. Plus, that’s such an unimaginative maneuver for an American action feature to engage in. Of course we’d resort to torture in escapist vigilante stories. At least Ayer doesn’t drench all the spectacle in nauseating grey and blue hues like he did in Fury and Suicide Squad. Much like with his last Statham collaboration, The Beekeeper, A Working Man often utilizes brightly colored interior neon lighting to lend distinctive hues to key scenes. Backrooms where meth business plans materialize are drenched in red. Artemis and Viper even bring Jenny to one “client” whose apartment is coated in vivid purple.
In terms of action sequences, A Working Man is kind of a shrug. When it comes to pathos, it’s also a wash. Sentimentality stemming from Cade’s father/daughter dynamic doesn’t work since the latter figure doesn’t feel like a believable character. Meanwhile, Cade’s crusade against human traffickers boils down to him having a daughter. That's the only way he could feel sorrow over a college-aged woman's kidnapping. Not since Next Goal Wins has a movie so explicitly explored men solely empathizing with women through seeing them as their daughter. Ladies don’t have humanity otherwise!
However, Ayer’s production does work in its most inexplicable, silly flourishes. For instance, Artemis and Viper are arch cartoonish buffoons more evocative of Pokemon’s Jesse and James than even John Lithgow in Cliffhanger. The weirdly dense Chicago Russian mafia lore also got some chuckles out of me simply in how inexplicable it is. Then there’s this one weird line from Gunny Lefferty that I can’t get out of my head.
This piece of dialogue emerges when Lefferty is showing Cade his stockpile of weapons. Lefferty runs his fingers across one gun and then declares it “the Chevy Impala of the War on Terror.” Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mirror is easier to decipher than that collection of words. A Working Man is unquestionably a disposable entry in the Jason Statham action cinema canon. However, this production delivers bizarro lines like that one Lafferty declaration or Corvisieri’s costumes ensure. That’s infinitely more virtues than Ayer’s Bright delivered, at least.