The author-director David Ayer started his profession concocting scripts for motion thrillers that put some psychological nuance into their boom-boom pyrotechnics. Sure, Denzel Washington’s chest-beating boasts in “Coaching Day” (2001) made theaters quake even when they weren’t outfitted with Dolby, however there have been additional dimensions to his character.
It appears as if he threw all that form of factor out of his device package across the time of “Suicide Squad” (2016). Ayer’s photos are purely blunt-force objects now, and efficient ones. And all of the extra persuasive when Jason Statham stars in them.
In “A Working Man,” whose script was coauthored by Ayer and Sylvester Stallone, Statham performs a building employee with a violent previous from which he’s attempting to distance himself. (Fats likelihood in this type of film.) When the daughter of his boss is kidnapped, he’s is compelled to go to labyrinthine and brutal lengths to get her again.
This film follows up on Statham and Ayer’s 2024 “The Beekeeper,” an identical payback punishment image whose compelled premise wasn’t helped by its garishly dressed villains. The villains listed below are garishly dressed too, however there’s a rationale: They’re Russian. In any occasion, Statham racks up bad-guy kills like he’s gathering Pokémon.
Because the kidnapped daughter, Jenny, Arianna Rivas takes fruitful benefit of her character’s efforts to combat again, displaying acrobatic motion chops. The star’s outdated “Lock, Inventory and Two Smoking Barrels” mate Jason Flemyng performs a slimy oligarch, and David Harbour is Statham’s smart pal (and armorer); it’s a satisfying solid all the best way down. In a peculiar contact, close to the tip of the film, its slimiest villain, performed by Kenneth Collard, places on a dressing up that makes him seem like the Brazilian filmmaker José Mojica Marins’s legendary villain, Coffin Joe. I dug it.
A Working ManRated R for violence and language. Working time: 1 hour 56 minutes. In theaters.
