Levon Cade left behind a decorated military career in the black ops to live a simple life working construction. But when his boss’s daughter, who is like family to him, is taken by human traffickers, his search to bring her home uncovers a world of corruption far greater than he ever could have imagined.
What We Thought:
The Beekeeper is one of the best surprise gems of the past few years so hearing Jason Statham was reteaming with its director, David Ayer, made me excited for A Working Man. The trailer looked solid and it seemed like a fun, over-the-top action flick especially with Ayer co-writing it with Sylvester Stallone. So the movie is great right? Unfortunately it’s one of the most disappointing films I’ve seen in a long time.
The film starts out fine with Statham as a foreman type on a construction site. Everyone there loves him, especially the family who owns the company. Their daughter sees Statham’s Levon character take on a group of bad guys when they come for one of his employees and she wants him to teach her how to handle herself. He promises to always have her back and that promise will come back to haunt him.
While out celebrating the end of a school semester with girlfriends, the daughter is taken and her parents want Levon to get her back. He at first says no, that his killing for the military days are behind him, but of course he promised to have her back and he does what he needs to do to get her back.
Unfortunately this is when the film loses steam until the third act. There are way too many characters and subplots that the film drags forever. There are drug dealing bartenders, drug dealing bikers, drug dealing Russian Bratva members and rich elitists wanting girls. And those are just the bad guys. There’s also a subplot with Levon’s daughter, her grandfather and dead mother, Levon’s blind ex-military friend (underused David Harbour), a friend in the DEA who’s never shown again and so much more. If it’s about Levon feeling like the kidnapped daughter is his family, cut his family story completely or at least don’t have the dead mother/grandfather custody angle. There is just too much going on in a film that should be about an Army of One killing Russians and saving the girl.
If A Working Man came out in 1995 it might be cool. It definitely feels dated and has some cheesy dialogue. There are two “tough women” gangster characters that look like one punch would knock them out. One drug dealing character says he’s ex-Airborne, but is way too big for that. The second act drags on way too long and despite the solid third act onslaught, by that point I was bored. Once Statham gets to be Statham on the bad guys it’s interesting, but the build up takes forever. Hopefully The Beekeeper 2 will be a return to form because I was so disappointed in this.
The Nerds Templar 