A construction manager with a military background begins a war with the Russian mafia while tracking down a kidnapped girl in A Working Man, opening in Prague and cinemas worldwide this weekend. This one never deviates from the usual John Wick formula, but committed work from lead Jason Statham and some flavorful supporting performances, inspired costume design, and kinetic action sequences keep it firing on all cylinders despite a lengthy runtime.
Directed by David Ayer (Suicide Squad, End of Watch), A Working Man stars Statham as Levon Cade, a former British military officer and current construction manager at a site run by Joe Garcia (Michael Peña), along with his wife (Noemi Gonzalez) and college-age daughter Jenny (Arianna Rivas). Levon has long left behind his life of violence, and sleeps on a blood-stained mattress in the scummiest motel in town while directing his income towards the legal bills to fight his former father in law Dr. Ruth (Richard Heap) in a custody battle over his young daughter Merry (Isla Gie).
But when Jenny is kidnapped from a sleazy club during a night partying with her friends, Joe and Noemi beg Levon to resurrect his troubled past and help them track her down. And after feigning some initial reluctance (“I’ve put all that behind me,” Levon wheezes), he finally muscles up the courage to save that nice young woman who brought him homemade lunch every day from a lifetime of sex slavery.
Yes, yes, you know exactly what’s going to happen here, and by the time Levon menacingly drizzles too much maple syrup on a tough biker’s pancakes, A Working Man has nicely settled into the usual vigilante movie groove. But what you may not be expecting is the sometimes bizarre turns this story takes, and the high amount of colorful supporting work that brightens up an otherwise gloomy narrative.
Part of what makes A Working Man work is a self-aware script by director Ayer and (who else?) Sylvester Stallone, from the novel Levon’s Trade by Chuck Dixon, a comics writer who worked on notable runs in The Punisher and Batman franchises. They know while Levon is the usual unkillable John Wick-style assassin, what he accomplishes with brute force he most certainly lacks in ingenuity.
See, Levon easily could have quite easily worked out what has happened to Jenny with a little finesse; instead, he inadvertently sets off a personal war with both the Russian mafia and a drug dealing biker gang that has nothing to do with his primary objective. Towards the end, he shares a meaningful gaze with the Viking-helmeted biker who doesn’t know why he’s chasing Levon, or why Levon has just thrust a knife through his neck. Sorry, brother.
Also caught up in Levon’s crossfire: Russian mob boss Wolo Kolisnyk (Jason Flemyng); his dirtbag son Dimi (Maximilian Osinski), whose side hustle sets everything in motion; Dimi’s cousins (Greg Kolpakchi and Piotr Witkowski), thugs decked out in designer track suits; their father Symon (Andrej Kaminsky), who ends up trying to sort out what is going on; his mafia associate Yuri (Merab Ninidze); and Yuri’s two machine-gun wielding goons (Max Croes and Ricky Champ).
Then there’s the Viking biker gang, which Levon infiltrates for reasons so contrived we wonder if he actually remembers what he’s supposed to be doing. There’s the leader Dutch (Chidi Ajufo); his second-in-command and recipient of Levon’s excessive syrup-drizzling Dougie (Cokey Falkow); and their associates Artemis (Eve Mauro) and Viper (Emmett J Scanlan), who are, at long last, actually involved in the central kidnapping—but only for reasons of sheer coincidence.
Each of these characters is memorable in their own unique way; the Russians, in particular, get so much screentime that A Working Man starts to turn into Anora, with Symon aping Karren Karagulian‘s Toros as the elder presence trying in vain to control a situation spiraling out of control. His final scene, after not interacting with Levon for the entire film but following all the destruction left in his wake, is especially gratifying for this kind of thing.
But there are so many colorful supporting turns and interesting faces here—including David Harbour, who shows up as Levon’s blind ex-military buddy—that A Working Man almost starts to turn into a Fellini film. There are competent action scenes, too, but nothing on the level of the John Wick movies (or even last week’s Novocaine). No, it’s the acting that elevates this Jason Statham revenge thriller.
A Working Man doesn’t quite match the over-the-top fun of Statham and Ayer’s previous collaboration, The Beekeeper, but there’s still a lot of amusement to be had beneath this one’s veneer of grim self-seriousness. Imagine a story from the pages of The Punisher, adapted for the screen by Sylvester Stallone and starring Statham as the agent of vigilante justice, and you’ll have a good idea of what to expect here.
