I SAW A WORKING MAN

From the director and star of 2024's cult hit, The Beekeeper, comes A Working Man. 

Directed by David (Suicide Squad) Ayer, who coscripted with Sylvester Stallone (each having pulled from Chuck Dixon's novel, Levon's Trade), A Working Man depicts a humble gent, Jason Statham's Levon Cade, who enjoys supervising his daily, construction work, grateful that the Garcia family has hired him (a family that has, in fact, become like his own). However, when the Garcia's daughter, Arianna (Black Phone) Rivas' Jenny, is kidnapped by human-traffickers, ushered by high-tier Russian gangster Wolo Kolisnyk, who's played by Statham's Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels/Snatch costar, Jason Flemyng, Cade's military skills kick in, exposing a vengeful, fighting machine that won't rest until Jenny is rescued and the cavalcade of fiends bites the dust. 

Though A Working Man is a "pulpy" slice of fiction, its concept rises from hard truth. This is important, since an arrogant portion of our society dares to pretend that human trafficking doesn't exist or at least is overplayed among social concerns. On this bold basis, Cade's work-until-the-job-is-done crusade resonates with pragmatic impact, and for those who do hold a sincere, humanitarian perspective, his Dirty Harry/Billy Jack-ish assaults aren't only therapeutic, but perform as a message of awareness, in which a loathsome, biker-bureaucratic front promotes a horde of deep-rooted sins for profit.  

Statham shines in his tailor-made role, and Rivas grants the required sympathy and spunk to counter her tormentors. When Jenny is harmed, it gives the audience all the more cause to cheer Cade on. However, the surrounding cast also makes the Taken/Rambo: Last Blood-type plot engaging, creating characters, both good and bad, who are always believable, even when placed within the explosive extremes. 

These folks consist of David (Hellboy/Stranger Things/Black Widow) Harbour's Gunny Lefferty (a blind pal, who like Cade, spent time in the military); Michael (Ant-Man) Pena's Joe Garcia (an honorable patriarch); Noemi Gonzalez as Carla (Joe's warm-hearted spouse); Isla Gie as Merry (Cade's optimistic, little daughter); Richard Heap as Dr. Roth (Merry's hateful grandfather); and as the intersecting, syndicated antagonists: Emmet J. Scanlon, Eva Mauro, David Witts, Piotr Witkowski, Greg Kolpaki, Chidi Ajufo, Andrea Vasilou, Cokey Falkow, Ricky Champ, Andrej Kaminsky, Vanko Kharchenko, Merab Ninidsi, Maximillian Oskinski, in addition to a strange and dastardly extension of others, who stir the pot from all ends of the hellish spectrum. (Be warned: The many participants do make the content more complex, but this should work to its advantage on repeated viewings, giving one extra layers to inspect.)  

I give Ayer, Stallone and Statham a lot of credit for making this movie and Dixon for conceiving the literary foundation. Sure, the stuff-shirts and magic-wand proponents are likely to scoff at it, but if so, shame on them. Like The Beekeeper, A Working Man is a fantasy-revenge yarn first and foremost, but that doesn't erode the manner in which it'll resonate with those smart enough to appreciate it. That it makes wise use of good, old-fashioned virility works, too, particularly in light of the recycled, anti-macho debris that we've been shoehorned as of late, not only in the movies, but thanks to a dictatorial spread of annoying, cultural bias.