A Working Man

Directed by David Ayer, A Working Man follows former military man Levon Cade (Jason Statham) as he’s forced to spring back into action after his employer’s (Michael Peña’s Joe) teenage daughter is kidnapped. It’s a seemingly foolproof premise that’s employed to periodically watchable yet woefully erratic effect by Ayer, as the filmmaker, armed with his and Sylvester Stallone’s screenplay, delivers a palpably overlong endeavor that contains its fair share of lamentably uninvolving stretches – with this particularly true of a midsection devoted mostly to the often impossibly tiresome antics of various villainous periphery characters. (Ayer’s decidedly inept handling of the picture’s high-octane moments only exacerbates the sometimes arms-length atmosphere, to be sure.) There’s little doubt, then, that A Working Man‘s passable vibe is due predominantly to Statham’s typically commanding efforts and a handful of admittedly compelling sequences and set-pieces (eg Levon interrogates a high-ranking member of the Russian mob, Levon storms the remote house where said teenage daughter is being held, etc), which undoubtedly confirms the feeling that the movie could (and should) have been seriously streamlined and cut down to around 90 minutes (ie the almost two hour runtime is nothing short of absurd, ultimately) – with the end result a decent-enough Statham vehicle that does, at least, pack a violent punch from time to time.

**1/2 out of ****