Review of “A working man”: Statham Swings Tools, almost strikes the target

“A working man” opens onto a batty pastiche of bullets and buzz saws, parachutes and cranes. A corpse of a soldier rests under an American flag. A cement mixer heads for a construction site. There is something that affects modestly (and complicated) about the career arc of an entrepreneur named Levon Cade (Jason Statham) who exploded buildings and erects them now, although as an advertisement for veterans for a hardware store, the editing would be slightly exaggerated. Director David Ayer is trying to support a link between last year's surprise “The beekeeper”, “ in which Statham played an assassin who became a hive master, and the latter, in which he plays an ex-soldier at hand with a hammer.

Among these two thrusts, honey turns out to be funnier than helmets. “A worker” establishes an unstable balance between solemn and ridiculous. The configuration is that the sexual traffickers took the 19 -year -old daughter of Levon Joe and Carla (Michael Peña and Noemi Gonzalez). Statham remains straight through Levon's bloody quest to recover it, even if it takes it to places that make “Pizzagate” Look reasonable: a nightclub with fire jugglers, a golden speakeasy on back like “The Great Gatsby” and a biker bar decorated by hundreds of human skulls and a throne merged from chrome rods. Production and costume designers have fun. Even an outdoor scene is lit by such a large and low moon, Levon could lead a tank through. Maybe they save their space adventures for a suite.

Levon meets and assassinates a wacky goon team that wears everything, from chic vampire to the meal chain capets. In addition to a fight inside a speed van, real fights are not so interesting; We mainly appreciate the clothes. “I am the big potatoes”, a flipper (Maximilian Osinski) presense in a cowboy hat in lace and ruffled sleeves. We are somewhere in Illinois, but he seems to have escaped an asylum in Versailles.

No one in the film comments on fries. Ayer is simply shaken a script which, otherwise, would feel rudimentary if it was played Liam Neeson in a gray t-shirt. In the source material of the film, the 2014 novel “Levon's Trade” (The first of 12 cades de Denron Cade de Chuck Dixon), the strangest outfit belongs to a brute carrying “The Last Member Only Jacket On Earth”.

At its foundation, the film is a Hoary shot with Quirk Spackled on it. The vanity of construction workers is abandoned more quickly than a pile of bricks. There is a fight at the top where Levon swings a bucket of nail in the face of a gangster, and after that, his character is by default his special training: he is eager to go to waterboarding. Levon drowns a goon, then another and two others. Too bad the title “Aquaman” has already been taken.

The project goes up before the buzz on bees. Sylvester Stallone Previously, we have tried to adapt the pocket franchise of Dixon for television and is credited as a co-writer alongside Ayer. I appreciate the adjustments they brought to the book. (Let the female characters speak, for one.) Ayer made his bones with the drama Streetwise LAPD “Training day”, “ Washington's winner of Denzel Washington an Oscar main actor, and he refuses to take the genre of vigilance seriously. On the contrary, he takes this kind of fox news from fear of dreck as seriously as it deserves it – like a stupid fiction.

“A worker” molds the character from Levon to Statham, making him a British soldier and tilting the axis of the evil of the book far from “” Good, everyone. After 22 years of service, doing secret and horrible things – he Keep its classified military actions – Levon is now in Chicago with the SSPT (a condition that is mentioned once), a dead American wife and a primary school child whose courts have decided should live with the rich stepfather of Levon, Dr. Roth (Richard Heap). Although he is supposed to be a suffocating neurosurgeon, Dr. Roth wears fur hats and yoga pants. Maybe the script intended to write “Dennis Rodman.”

The first auto-surious section of the film drags while he establishes that Levon is a just guy who sleeps in his van to save money for his battle on duty. It is a shame that muscle man is not invited to carry his share of comedy. It is also useless. Whoever loves this kind of pulp knows These revengeful angels characters are more or less the same: intense, taciturn, minimalist. If Levon has a tick, it is his impatience to continue the murder. He extinguishes the bad guys with comically small, sometimes before he draws a lot of information. His key strategy seems to use corpses like duck lure, hunting the one who cares about his latest corpse. As his best boyfriend Gunny (David Harbor) says: “You have killed your way – you will have to kill your way.”

I dug Jenny from Arianna Rivas, the Kidnapped mix that plays an active role in her own rescue. Jenny's hobbies include calculation, karate and piano sheets. (She so often plays “Moonlight Sonata” that the composer Jared Michael Fry works in the score.) Jenny also claims to know how to break our fingers, although we never see this festive turn. Although the character relaxes the credulity, Rivas cheek with Aplomb. The accumulation of his kidnapping is strangely adorable: Jenny and her college friends come out dressed in a skirt and pearl group costume – they are Cospissal as a political border? – Then make cheerleading routines on a dance floor. As frivolous as it may be, these inventive details convince us thaty did not simply call it.

The bad guys are Fodder cannons, although I liked the way a gangster unfortunately sighs on a grenade before exploding. Congratulations to the casting team to hire actors with interesting faces – Max Croes, Cokey Falkow and Andrej Kaminsky are now engraved in my memory – and I could not help developing a weakness for the affairs of Chidi Ajufo, a veteran colleague whose memorable film: “You are not a tea man.

Dutch also deserves the second most poignant release in the film. The most emotional goes to a firearm that has given complete military salute. Ayer knows what his audience wants and he is ready to give them. He is also a man who works, but at least his product is made to measure.