I’ve been seeing a lot of people online griping that “A Working Man is no Beekeeper”. Fair enough, but that kind of blanket statement undersells just how good the film is. The fact that it doesn’t quite hit the heights of The Beekeeper should in no way be taken as a slight to A Working Man, the latest collaboration between Jason Statham and director David Ayer. Saying “A Working Man is no Beekeeper” is like saying “The Magnificent Ambersons is no Citizen Kane”. That’s true enough, but dude, it’s still The Magnificent fucking Ambersons.
Statham plays a former soldier working as a humble construction worker. When his boss’s daughter is kidnapped by Russian slavers, he goes to work. And by “goes to work”, I mean he blows away a bunch of Russian gangsters, grubby drug dealers, and skeevy bikers.
Boasting a script co-written by Rambo himself, Sylvester Stallone, A Working Man is a better than average Statham vehicle that gives the audience exactly what they came to see. Ayer plays to Statham strengths, and Stallone’s script gives him a stoic character that fits him like a glove. Sure, he doesn’t have the great one-liners like he did in The Beekeeper, but the film is essentially wall to wall action and packed to the gills with scenes of Statham taking out the trash. Because of that, all is right with the world.
The supporting cast is strong across the board. Jason Flemyng (Statham’s co-star from his early Guy Ritchie movies) is good as the head of the Russian mob. David Harbour has a lot of chemistry with Statham as his blind war buddy who acts as a mix of conscience and weapons supplier. Arriana Rivas is also memorable as the kidnapped girl.
Is the film perfect? Well, it runs a little long and some of the action scenes suffer from over-editing and less than optimal camerawork. (The bulk of the action is A-OK though.) These are relatively minor quibbles than anything. At the end of the day, A Working Man gets the job done.