Let’s not kid ourselves: if you buy a ticket for a Jason Statham vehicle directed by David Ayer—co-scripted, for heaven’s sake, by Sylvester Stallone—you know what ride you’re strapping in for. “A Working Man” is another raucous plunge into the shark-infested waters of the action-thriller genre, humming with the familiar bass of vengeance and sweat. The surprise, perhaps, is that there is almost no surprise at all.
Statham, ever the reliable piston in Hollywood’s action engine, plays Levon Cade—a name that sounds as if it should be carved onto the side of a battered lunchbox or stamped on a dog tag. He’s a former Royal Marine Commando now passing as a blue-collar foreman (his hands every bit as meaty as the bricks he supervises), and it’s to the film’s credit that it doesn’t waste a second pretending he’s just here to arrange rebar. When the Garcia family’s daughter—Jenny, played with a mix of pluck and calculated vulnerability—falls into the acid bath of Russian traffickers, you can practically hear the starter pistol firing for another round of dad-adjacent mayhem.
The formula is time-honored: rescue the girl, decimate the Bratva, and gaze meaningfully into the middle-distance as a Dropkick Murphys track grinds over the sound system (“The Boys Are Back” is a fine, if on-the-nose, needle drop—sure, let the bloodbath have a chorus). But what’s startling is just how enthusiastically Ayer leans into the tropes. The movie is glazed with a gritty sheen—lighting that could have been siphoned from a warehouse shootout or the tail end of a bad night in Chicago—and Statham glides through it all as the immovable object, delivering strangled one-liners and ham-sized fists with equal seriousness.
It’s almost a ritual at this point: the bad guys leer and spit threats in generically Slavic accents, the hero flexes through a dossier’s worth of improbable set-pieces, and we’re reminded, for the hundredth time, why police procedure is only ever an impediment to getting things done. The supporting cast—Michael Peña’s everyman warmth, David Harbour’s gruff camaraderie—keeps things afloat, acting as friendly buoys in a sea of concrete and carnage, but make no mistake: this is Statham’s movie. He’s a specialist in the genre’s particular brand of sentimental brutality, and “A Working Man” rests on his battered credibility like a scaffold on a reliable foundation.
The film’s feints at “deeper” themes—sacrifice, found family, the code of working-class loyalty—are as serviceable as the action choreography. (If you’ve seen “Taken” or “John Wick,” you’ll know exactly where your pulse will spike and when it’s safe to hit the snack bar.) The devotion on display is touching in an efficient, template-driven way—Levon’s sense of obligation to Jenny, not a blood relation but a ward of his affections, gives the film enough soul to keep the violence from curdling into pure cartoon.
But let’s be honest: originality has left the building, and nobody bothered to turn off the fluorescent lights. “A Working Man” clicks through its paces like an old watch—serviceable, unfussy, and content to tell the time without a single new tick. The pacing, especially early on, drags its boots through plot mud, stretching the run-up to the inevitable brawls, but when the gears finally mesh—Statham wading into gunfire and breaking kneecaps to a pub-rock soundtrack—it’s the familiar, greasy satisfaction of comfort food cinema.
Is this a “great movie”? Not at all. Is it, on some primordial level, enjoyable? Absolutely—if you’re susceptible to Statham’s hangdog stoicism and David Ayer’s slab-sided direction. Action fans and devotees of the vengeful lone wolf will feel they’ve gotten what they paid for (just as a burger at a truck stop is still a burger, no matter how many you’ve had before).
The ending explodes as expected, with noise and resolution, bathing Levon in the radioactive glow of justifiable carnage. The protector archetype—the working-class saint with fists of fury—still sells, even if, by 2025, it’s about as worn as a crooked screwdriver. If “A Working Man” lacks the risk-taking verve of Altman or the bruise-blue artistry of early Scorsese, at least it’s honest enough to admit who it’s for. And if you sit in the dark grinning when bad men get what’s coming to them, you’re in good company.
So let’s call it as it is: “A Working Man” is just ok—pure genre fare, neither embarrassed nor ambitious, running on the steam of its leading man and the comfort of well-worn plot. Sometimes, that’s all an audience wants. Sometimes, that’s enough.
