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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nJason Statham has a new movie out. He plays with a guy who used to work in a violent profession, but he\u2019s sworn to leave that life behind. But now some bad people have messed with his employer (the only people to help him out when he was at a low point), and he\u2019s going to make the bad guys pay. Cue a series of investigations, interrogations, and of course, action sequences. He\u2019ll go through several tiers of bad guys, until he\u2019s contending with a huge crime empire that probably could have gone on unimpeded if a low-level employee hadn\u2019t caused problems for Statham. Oh, and the whole thing is directed by David Ayer. The movie is called \u201cThe Beekeeper 2.\u201d Okay, not really, it\u2019s called \u201cA Working Man,\u201d but as similar as it is to that Statham vehicle from last year, it might as well be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Statham plays Levon Cade, a former soldier now living out of his pickup truck and working construction under the kindly Garcia family. Daughter Jenny (Arianna Rivas) gets kidnapped by human traffickers, and father Joe (Michael Pe\u00f1a) offers Cade some much-needed money to get her back. Cade needs the money and stability to help in the custody battle for his daughter (Isla Gie) against his father-in-law, the Most Punchable Man in the World (Richard Heap). With a little help and encouragement from his blind comrade Gunny (David Harbour), Cade sets out on a mission to rescue Jenny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cade\u2019s path of destruction will pit him against drug dealers, biker gangs, corrupt cops, and Russian gangsters, and all of that before the human traffickers. In an unusual move, Cade doesn\u2019t spend the whole movie working his way up to the highest-ranking Russian gangster (Jason Flemyng), rather, he spends about half the movie working up to the Big Bad and the other half working his way down, since the human trafficking is just a small part of the Russian mafia\u2019s operation. The villains he really wants are bumbling couple Viper (Emmett J. Scanlan) and Artemis (Eve Mauro), and they\u2019re so incompetent that a deus ex machina does half the work for him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The movie doesn\u2019t work as straightforward excitement, the most entertainment I got was laughing at how stupid it is. There\u2019s the staggering idiocy by most of the bad guys \u2013 it\u2019s hard to believe they were ever smart enough to put together a criminal empire. And yes, this is the kind of movie where Cade has expert marksmanship and not a single bad guy can hit the broad side of a barn. Some of the characters just look ridiculous, especially the nephews of the Flemyng character, who are dressed like they\u2019re going to a costume party as 80\u2019s break dancers. There\u2019s an actual costume party in the last act and the partygoers there don\u2019t look half as gaudy as these schnooks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My favorite way to pass the time during \u201cA Working Man\u201d was pretending that the Russian gangsters were connected to the goons from \u201cAnora.\u201d Like maybe the Flemyng character and Anora\u2019s Russian boyfriend had the same interior decorator or something (both houses give off the same fancy-but-the-owners-don\u2019t-enjoy-it vibe). What I\u2019m saying is that I checked out of this garbage movie and started thinking about a better one. That is, when I wasn\u2019t thinking about another crummy Statham\/Ayer movie in \u201cThe Beekeeper,\u201d which this movie just lazily retreads. Sitting through \u201cA Working Man\u201d was real work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Grade: C-<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cA Working Man\u201d is rated R for strong violence, language throughout, and drug content. Its running time is 116 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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