‘A Working Man’ (2025)
Bet you didn’t know that Sylvester Stallone penned screenplays for Jason Statham beatdown flicks. Alright, that’s a bit of an oversell, as only two films fit that description: “Homefront” (2013) and this “Jack Reacher”-esque adaptation of Chuck Dixon’s 2014 novel, “Levon’s Trade.” But there’s something righteous and ultramanly in the pairing, and the two have also joined up on screen to kick some nefarious ass in Sly’s “Expendables” series. Here, Statham (“The Transporter,” “The Meg”) plays Dixon’s titular hero, a working man with a past as a special-ops commando. Levon is widowed, and his young daughter Merry (Isla Gie) lives with her maternal grandfather, a bitter man with tons of cash who blames Levon for his daughter’s death and throws piles of green to his army of lawyers to make it so Levon has no place in Merry’s life. The owners of the Chicago construction company Levon works for, Joe Garcia (Michael Peña) and his wife Carla (Noemi Gonzalez), have taken him in as family, a detail that gets overplayed. So when their daughter Jenny (Arianna Rivas) is kidnapped by the Russian mafia, Levon reluctantly puts on the flak vest and works his way up the crime syndicate’s ladder. In his way are a biker bar full of ex-military drug dealers, two gangsters in satin pajamas and ridiculous bucket hats, a guy named Dimi with hair that would make Fabio envious and goth flunkies who look like they escaped from an “Addams Family” project and got their hands on high-level weaponry. The fight choreography is pretty tight, but the film goes on too long and has too many dead spots, not to mention that each kill feels redundant and cold. David Ayer, who’s been down the macho vengeance road before and better with “Harsh Times” (2005), “End of Watch” (2012) and the Statham-starring “The Beekeeper” last year, seems to have lost his fastball of quick pacing and has too much packed into the script. Statham holds it all together with his cool bristle, but “A Working Man” could and should have been so much more of a plucky can of whoop-ass. (Tom Meek) At Apple Cinemas Cambridge, 168 Alewife Brook Parkway, Cambridge Highlands near Alewife and Fresh Pond, and AMC Assembly Row 12, 395 Artisan Way, Assembly Square, Somerville
Cambridge writer Tom Meek’s reviews, essays, short stories and articles have appeared in WBUR’s The ARTery, The Boston Phoenix, The Boston Globe, The Rumpus, The Charleston City Paper and SLAB literary journal. Tom is also a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics and rides his bike everywhere.
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