Review: A WORKING MAN

 by Rob DiCristino

Meat and potatoes.

To properly understand my thoughts on David Ayer’s new thriller A Working Man, you first need to know something about me: I’m very careful about what I eat. I exercise six days a week and spend what some would consider far too much time and money making simple, nutrient-forward meals out of whole ingredients — “colorful and consistent” is the saying in the fitness community — in order to reap the most satiating rewards out of that work. I avoid soda and fast food whenever possible. I’ve learned to love fat free Greek yogurt the way I used to love ice cream. When the time comes to enjoy a libation, I’ve replaced sugary cocktails with a few fingers of bourbon on the rocks. I use an app to track my macronutrient balance each day — shout-out to MacroFactor — and I find genuine, borderline-autistic satisfaction in meeting the goals it lays out for me. You might say this all sounds obsessive or unhealthy, and that’s okay! We all get to decide for ourselves what makes us happiest, and I’m happiest when I’m feeling disciplined, organized, and fulfilled.

But sometimes I just want a big, greasy cheeseburger, you know? Sometimes I want French fries and a milkshake. Have you ever had a Reese’s Peanut Butter Blizzard from Dairy Queen? Have you heard the Good Word about chicken parmesan? Carbs and sugar and fat are delicious, and the only way I can maintain my otherwise-disciplined lifestyle is by occasionally going hog-wild on a bag of Doritos or a cheesesteak calzone. Now, at long last, what in the holy hell does any of this have to do with Jason Statham’s new action picture? Well, my cinematic diet works largely the same way: I try to favor quality over quantity, filling in historical blind spots and torturing myself with three-hour Bulgarian war epics on Criterion at the expense of keeping up with each and every new release. Completist though I may be, I still haven’t seen Borderlands or Marry Me. I’ve slept on Unfrosted and the Mean Girls remake. And I’m not a snob, mind you. I’m just efficient. But every now and then — every once in a while — I just need a goddamn cheeseburger.

That’s where David Ayer’s A Working Man comes in. Based on the pulpy novel Levon’s Trade and co-written by Ayer and Sylvester Stallone (who originally optioned it as a television project for his own Balboa Productions), it follows retired Royal Marine Levon Cade (Statham) as he tries to build a new life as a construction foreman in Chicago. Stripped of custody of his daughter (Isla Gie) due to unresolved PTSD — he allegedly played a role in the death of his wife, a thread the film gets bored with and abandons before it can be resolved — Cade finds comfort as a member of his employers’ extended family: The Garcias (Michael Peña and Noemi Gonzalez) and their teenage daughter, Jenny (Arianna Rivas), treat him like a brother; they accept his rough edges and don’t ask too many questions about his conspicuous talents with bladed weapons. But when a human trafficking ring led by Dimi (Maximillian Osinski) abducts Jenny during a night out with her friends, Cade is forced to harness the violence and rage he thought he’d finally left behind.

You’ve seen A Working Man a thousand times, so there’s no sense in explaining much more of the plot than that. It’s Taken with Death Wish sprinkles; it’s Walking Tall dressed up as John Wick. Like Ayer and Statham’s last team-up — 2024’s undeniably watchable The Beekeeper — it’s a hearty stew of classic revenge actioner tropes delivered with such speed and ferocity that we’re never able to stop long enough to consider if anything we’re seeing makes the tiniest lick of sense. While contemporaries like Tom Cruise try to stave off the ravages of age with death-defying stunts and unsightly plastic surgery — Who was that guy in the Super Bowl commercial, and what has he done with Tom Cruise? — Jason Statham continues his leisurely ride down that same lane he’s been in since the Guy Ritchie days, the one built around his trademark combination of playful smirks and concussive haymakers. We know exactly who Statham is on screen. A Working Man knows we know. We know A Working Man knows we know. And knowledge, as we know, is power.

Okay, maybe “knowledge” isn’t the word to use when talking about A Working Man, a movie with so many rocks in its brain that it’s eventually forced to take a few out and juggle them to keep its momentum going. David Ayer may not have improved on his craft in twenty years at the helm, but there’s a confidence to this film’s bleach-out lighting schemes and attention-deficient editing that suggests he may have finally accepted his true role as a Redbox auteur. As with its conflicted protagonist, A Working Man thrives when it leans into B-movie absurdity, when it sends Statham to a biker bar patrolled by the delightful capo Dutch (Chidi Ajufo) and his S&M gang, puts him in a firefight with a mute, bug-eyed vampire (Max Croes) with a machine gun, or stages a final confrontation with Jenny’s would-be buyer, a foppish millionaire inexplicably dressed as Burgess Meredith’s Penguin from the ‘60s Batman show. This is all to say nothing of a blind David Harbour and a pair of mook siblings dressed in the loudest pajama couture I’ve ever seen on film.

A Working Man does reach for substance on occasion: Cade and Dutch bond over their military service, which gives their bare-knuckle finale an unexpected bit of texture and — dare I say it? — grace. Arianna Rivas gives a winning performance as a kidnapee who refuses to succumb to genre cliche, enough so that Statham should have thrown her a shotgun and let her take more of her own vengeance in hand. There’s interesting stuff all over A Working Man, honestly, but it knows far better than to examine anything with too much specificity. We don’t come to this film for depth or complexity. We don’t need to know why head mafioso Symon (Andrej Kaminsky) abandons his revenge plot so suddenly — Maybe someone told him the movie was over? — or why the moon hanging over the third act is a big as the fucking Amblin logo. This is not for A Working Man to say. A Working Man is simple. Humble. Direct. It’s for your belly, not your brain. It’s a cheeseburger and French fries. Should you eat it every day? Maybe not, but it does hit the spot every now and then.

A Working Man hits U.S. theaters today.