drjacobgrayson

Jason Statham plays the same character that he does in every other one of his movies, of course, but A Working Man is more of a Steven Seagal-like straight-to-video effort, i.e. An extra dumb plot, big plot holes, cartoonish characters, over-the-top acting, and of course Statham has to say things like "I don't want any trouble" before beating the crap out of everyone. I could probably write a book about all the dumb things that are said in this movie, but I'll just give one: When a mother's daughter is kidnapped by a Russian crime mob, the police tell her "they don't pursue these cases." Ok well, I guess vigilante justice is our only option then.

This movie is shot entirely from a single handheld camera within a house, which gives it a definite "college film class" vibe. Everyone is overacting like they think they're in a play rather than a movie, and the "family" just doesn't seem to know each other very well, it's like they just met on the movie set a few days ago. There are little subplots that are never fully realized, the purpose of which it turns out is just to try to extend this into a full length movie (84 min). This very well could have been a 15-minute short film on YouTube, and it would have been okay but still not great. I'm surprised Lucy Liu doesn't have some better opportunities.

This is a wispy drama-comedy-romance movie where there isn't so much as a plot as characters moving around a plot. Much of the dialogue seems semi-improvised, little snippets of what appear to be a much longer conversation. The main characters all seem somewhat unsatisfied with their lives, but at the same time don't take a lot of steps to change that. The ending is similar to the beginning in that we kind of aimlessly drift in and then slowly drift out again without much having been resolved. If none of what I've written sounds promising or describes a 9/10 movie for you, then you probably won't like it. But it's only 80 minutes so I encourage you to give it a try.