“You killed your way into this, so you’re gonna have to kill your way out of it.”

2024’s sublimely entertaining The Beekeeper gave Jason Statham’s action leading man career the much needed boost of ridiculous levity it has always needed. Statham re-teaming with that film’s director, David Ayer, 14 months later for A Working Man seemed like a no-brainer, though the films are (sadly) not interchangeable. I know how absurd that sounds, but basically it comes down to this: A Working Man takes itself way more seriously than The Beekeeper.

I feel like that likely falls at the feet of co-screenwriter Sylvester Stallone, whose tenuous relationship with comedy allowed him to get fooled by frenemy Arnold Schwarzenegger into doing Stop! Or My Mom will Shoot. Stallone, who likely intended to play this film’s lead character at some point in time, seems to have removed all the quippy one-liners because he would have failed to deliver them convincingly. So what we’re left with is a serious-minded movie where categorically absurd things happen every five to ten minutes.

The film finds Statham’s ex-Royal Marine working as a construction foreman in Chicago for developer Joe Garcia (Michael Peña). While out partying with friends, Joe’s daughter Jenny (Arianna Rivas) is taken from a club by some low level Russian mafia thugs to be trafficked. The ring is run by Dimi (Maximilian Osinski), who is this flick’s equivalent of Josh Hutcherson’s Beekeeper antagonist: shit heel kid of powerful person whose careless criminal activity brings the wrath of Statham down on them all.

Cade promises the Garcias that he will bring Jenny home, no matter the cost, and the cost is quite substantial, with all roads leading to a biker bar in noted criminal hive Joliet, IL. The film’s plot is byzantine, adding character upon character in scene after scene, mostly as a way to give Statham two to twelve more villains to have to defeat. They mostly look like rejects from the cast of David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises, or in the case of Cokey Falkow’s Dougie, look like they wandered over from the set of a Rob Zombie movie.

There’s more than a little of Donald Westlake’s Parker in this character's DNA, which is interesting since Statham also played Parker in a subpar 2013 flick. However, that character and this film’s Levon Cade share a single minded determination with an end goal that seems so petty to people with both money and power. A Working Man is itself based on the book “Levon’s Trade” by comic book writer and co-creator of Batman villain Bane Chuck Dixon, so you can once again see the influences criss-crossing one another.

Yes, A Working Man is indeed another Jason Statham film where he single handedly takes down an entire criminal syndicate. It’s not exactly the same movie as The Beekeeper, but a visit to Maury Povich’s television program would definitely uncover shared parentage. This one is just so deadly serious most of the time that it can’t appreciate the absurdity of its own concept.

That doesn’t mean it’s not a lot of fun. It’s quite enjoyable to watch, though at times you may find yourself laughing at it, rather than with it. There is simply no reason to be this achingly sincere when you’re positing that one man can accomplish all of this, more or less, on his own. In some ways, it’s no different than the equally absurd and risible Sound of Freedom, just without openly pandering to its audience. Tell me you can’t hear Statham saying, “God’s children are not for sale,” to some Jared Leto-looking Russian mafia scumbag?

I could fill another review with all the things that make no sense about the film. I didn’t even mention until this sentence that Statham has a pre-teen daughter he’s locked in an Over the Top-like custody battle with his dead wife’s father—just keep recycling those same tired old tropes, Sly, no one’s gonna notice. I also failed to mention the other two recognizable stars, Jason Flemyng and David Harbour, but you’ve seen roughly 80% of their screen time if you’ve seen the trailer.

I could go on and on and on, but I don’t want to belabor the point. I enjoyed myself tremendously while watching the movie, there are few things in cinema I find more satisfying than Jason Statham making short work of nameless scumbums. But I also left this one feeling it was a lesser effort from all involved that was overly long and needlessly self-serious. This isn’t a huge step back after The Beekeeper, but it’s not a leap forward either.

Header image via IMDb