A Working Man

• Produced and Directed by David Ayer
• March 28, 2025 (US & UK)
• Based on the 2014 novel Levon’s Trade by Chuck Dixon

A construction worker with a mysterious past trying to be a good dad to his daughter must use those skills to help rescue a friend’s daughter.

At no point does A Working Man hide what it is or wishes it could be. The opening credits are like some weird James Bond-esque montage but more action oriented. Soldiers will be firing guns and the shells that fall to the ground are woodscrews and things like that. Weird and accidentally humorous but certainly setting the tone for Statham’s follow up to The Beekeeper. 

This movie wants to be more intelligent, emotional, or substantive than some of Statham’s other work. That’s where it all starts to go wrong. Statham is a good action actor and can bring some level of depth to his characters but ‘meaty’ is a little beyond his skill set. He is at his best when he is tearing through people and beating the crap out of them. Or at least being just generally tough. The downtime in this movie is to its detriment. It is a great deal of talking that goes nowhere.

There are great lags between fight scenes as Statham’s character spends a ton of time observing the next step in the local crime ladder he needs to encounter to get the girl back or watching the results of his actions from afar to plot his next move. Cut them down to fleeting seconds but Ayer is aiming for art.

This attempt at art makes the film feel slow and repetitive. The fun that usually accompanies Statham’s generally semi-serious efforts is missing. They mistook the superficial elements of artful as being artful. Statham may be yearning for more these days or understanding he will age out as an effective action star. BTW I think the stubble he always sports is darkened here.

Jason Statham stars as retired Royal Marines Colour Sergeant Levon Cade now working as a construction foreman for a mom-and pop operation in the US run by Joe and Carla Garcia (Michael Peña and Noemi Gonzalez respectively). When their daughter is kidnapped by sex traffickers the family goes to him for help and OF COURSE he obliges!

Cade has a subplot where he is fighting for custody of his daughter Merry (Isla Gie) from her douchebag grandpa Jordan Roth (Richard Heap) who blames Cade for the death of his daughter. Pop Pop spends his time in the movie trying to provoke a reaction from Cade until he is later thanking Cade for saving his life even though Cade’s actions against the villains are exactly what put him in danger and when you think about it gave Pops something far better than a physical altercation to use against Cade!

So many things or characters in here are almost inconsequential such as the grandfather and Cade’s daughter. Cade’s blind friend Gunny Lefferty (David Harbour) provides a hideout and guns but not too much else. Harbour’s performance was excellent but the character was unnecessary to the story since you would figure he could find relative safety in his own. The hamfisted reference to Saddam Hussein’s golden gun was a nice touch.

In any story there needs to be the sensation that both sides become locked into a final confrontation. Even if the hero gets whatever reasonable goal he set out to accomplish you need to think they and the villain MUST fight because it will never be truly over until they do. Not here.

Villains of this are sex trafficking Russians but none made enough of an impression for their names to be remembered. Jason Flemyng as Russian Mafia captain Wolo Kolisnyk is recognizable but his name never registers. If your villains are forgettable you need to rethink them.

This could’ve been cut down to about an hour. There is a lot of padding to make it look like Cade is a violent man with a heart and excising some if not all of that would’ve tightened the film and driven home the theme of him keeping his word to have the girl’s back like he had promised in the beginning.

A Working Man could have been an entertaining guilty pleasure but falls apart under lackluster villains and a desire to be more than it can offer. If you are looking for traditional Statham, skip.