Director
David Ayer
(THE BEEKEEPER, SUICIDE SQUAD)

Starring
Jason Statham, David Harbour and Michael Peña

Everything you need to know about A Working Man can be summed up in one simple fact; it was co-written and produced by Sylvester Stallone….you know, the bloke who can barely mumble a sentence that doesn’t require subtitles and hasn’t held any relevance in about 20 years…that Sylvester Stallone. As one would expect, the dialogue is about as well written as my Grade 1 short story about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles coming to my birthday party….although I legitimately would rather watch a film adaptation of that than anything written by Sylvester Stallone and directed by David Ayer again. He’s the guy that put The Beekeeper into cinemas as well as Suicide Squad (the shit Jared Leto one, not even the slightly better Idris Elba version).

If this film wasn’t based on a novel, I’m pretty sure I’d believe that Stallone’s process for writing this cringe fest was going ono ChatGPT and typing in the line ‘write me a late 80’s inspired action film using the word brother as often as possible’. I’m even certain you could transplant Jason Statham with Steven Segal and no one would know this isn’t a straight to video, Razzie contender from 1989. Even the music in the opening scene is reminiscent of that era. Why this novel was chosen is also beyond me, it’s just another film of a well-worn trope. Man’s friend’s daughter is kidnapped by human traffickers, man promised girl he would always have her back. Man just happens to be a former special ops (or some such bullshit that wasn’t interesting enough to care about) and so has some mad fighting skills. Man takes out Russian mafia one at a time ‘til all the bad guys are wishing they’d never kidnapped random man’s friend’s daughter. <– Shit that could actually be the screenplay verbatim.

Ironically if A Working Man was intentionally an action spoof film, this could almost be considered a success. But alas, it appears they were trying real hard…I’m just not sure how any actor can keep a straight face when uttering lines like “these ain’t the hands of a cop…these are the hands of a working man”. It also blows my mind that Jason Statham keeps getting roles like this. The Beekeeper was painful enough and should have been the final nail in his acting coffin. The man has all the charisma and talent of a pile of garden mulch.

Honestly, even if you’re dead bored and it’s tightarse Tuesday…save yourself the $10 and just re-watch John Wick (any of them) at home. Even with the dead puppy scene, it’s still going to be a more pleasurable experience that this abomination.

Regrettably, A Working Man is in cinemas now….probably in place of much MUCH better films that no one will get to see because they’re going to see this rubbish instead.