A Working Man

Year 18, Day 83 - 3/24/26 - Movie #5,282

BEFORE: I'm so mad at myself for not coming up with some kind of "Merc Madness" tournament, what with the college basketball thing going on and all. CBS shows are pre-empted this week, and on a few other channels too because of college sports, which I never really understand. Like who is a fan of NCAA hoops AND "Law & Order", like at the same time? Anyone? No, I didn't think so. And Colbert doesn't have too many weeks left in his show, and you're just going to run repeats? Not cool. 

Jason Statham carries over again and can I do two more with him? Yeah, I probably can but the last one might be the most ridiculous of all, from what I've heard. 

THE PLOT: Levon Cade left his profession behind to work construction and be a good dad to his daughter. But when a local girl vanishes, he's asked to return to the skills that made him a mythic figure in the shadowy world of counter-terrorism. 

AFTER: OK, we're going to fill in the Jason Statham plot Mad-Libs tonight, as you know, the framework is: "A man with a shadowy past as a _______ has retired to raise his _______ in seclusion, but when __________ is kidnapped, he's forced to take down _________ in order to bring them back."  Yesterday's answers, of course, were DEA agent, daughter, her cat and the local drug-lord, but today's answers are Marine Commando, daughter (again), the daughter of his construction boss and the Russian mob. Gee, I can't help but think these films are following some kind of formula.  I'd be really surprised if tomorrow's answers were circus clown, llama farm, Jack Black and ISIS, but it could happen.

As a bonus, Levon has to take down a biker gang, in addition to the entire Russian mob - that takes a lot of time, so that's why this one is almost two hours long. Thankfully the mob never gets around to killing Jenny, his boss's daughter, like they want to use her as a sex slave but she defends herself and nearly bites this guy's face off. Since she's so much trouble, they want to just kill her and dump her body, but then comic (?) circumstances keep arising so they kind of never really get around to it. Two of the mob's main operatives drive her away from the farmhouse and they're about to shoot her and dump her body in a swamp, but since she knows karate she manages to get away from them and escape. She gets rescued by a police car, only the police are ALSO in the pocket of the Russian mob, so instead of a police station, they drop her off back at the remote "farmhouse". Then a few hours later they try to kill her again, but then they get a call from their "client" who wants her delivered alive to him, so he can kill her. You know it only takes a few minutes to kill someone, here it takes a few days, which seems very hard to believe. 

But that does give Levon time to visit his old war buddy, get his permission (for some reason) to go look for the missing girl, and then start working his way up the crime family chain, starting with the bartender at the nightclub where she was made to disappear.  He ends up killing the bartender and his two buddies, so that would seem to be a dead end, except that he then follows home the Russian gangster who shows up to clean up the dead bodies. THAT guy he holds over a pool in a poorly balanced chair, but then the gangster won't stop screaming so he has to kill him too. I think if Levon could only have waited until he got a name or something from these gangsters before killing them, the process could have gone a lot faster. Just saying. 

That drowned gangster's brother finds him dead, and sends his own two sons to track down Levon, who is in the middle of trying another way in, looking for the son of the drowned guy, who is named Dimi. Dimi runs the human trafficking part of the Russian mob, and also has a biker gang making some kind of blue club drug. Levon uses a fake ID to masquerade as a drug buyer, somebody who wants to distribute the blue drug to the Chicago club scene, and both times he buys the drugs he just throws them in the river, which is probably bad news for the fish. But then the dumb and dumber sons of the drowned guy catch up with him (with the help of those corrupt cops) and throw him in a van, only cue the fight scene inside the van where Levon frees himself, shoots the driver in the head and crashes the van into a river, giving him the upper hand, and two more dead gangsters. 

Meanwhile, the upper members of the Russian mob wonder who this "devil" is that's killing all their enforcers, so they figure out his identity and send a crew to set fire to his father-in-law's house, which is where Levon's daughter lives. For safety's sake he brings his daughter to stay with his blind war buddy, then he's free to do whatever, which means finally getting close to Dimi and shooting him in the hand, so he'll reveal where this secret farmhouse/whorehouse is. Levon, the one-man army, then heads there for the final showdown against all of the biker gang, followed by the weirdest members of the Russian mob. Well, kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out, then moving on to that client who got his face bit off, and then Viper and Artemis, who are the enforcers who were too stupid to kill Jenny, time after time. 

I really don't know how seriously to take this one, because it's SO over-the-top and flat-out ridiculous, like I'm used to seeing Statham being the one-man army, and using the enemies as his shield, then getting into close hand-to-hand combat and killing people with his opponent's gun, that sort of thing. Then you know there's usually a moment in these Statham films where he's tied-up, or seemingly unconscious, or otherwise down for the count, and really, he's not even waiting for his second wind, he's just waiting for his opponents to let their guard down. Then those ten or fifty guys are in some SERIOUS trouble. They're also further hampered by those "villain bullets" that never hit the hero no matter how many they fire at him, while the hero's got perfect aim and all his shots land because his intentions are good. 

Of course, he's going to prevail, and if he says he's going to rescue the girl, he's going to rescue the girl, no matter how many bikers he has to kill or how long that takes. In most cases when someone's missing more than three days, that usually means they're dead - but of course there are going to be exceptions to that rule every once in a while, or if it's a movie. 

Directed by David Ayer (director of "The Beekeeper" and "Street Kings")

Also starring Jason Flemyng (last seen in "Transporter 2"), Merab Ninidze (last seen in "Conclave"), Maximilian Osinski (last seen in "People Like Us"), Cokey Falkow (last seen in "The Expendables 4"), Michael Peña (last seen in "The United States of Leland"), David Harbour (last seen in "Violent Night"), Noemi Gonzalez, Arianna Rivas, Isla Gie, Emmett J. Scanlan, Eve Mauro (last seen in "Land of the Lost"), Kristina Poli, Andrej Kaminsky (last seen in "John Wick: Chapter 4"), Greg Kolpakchi (last seen in "Kraven the Hunter"), Neil Bishop (ditto), Piotr Witkowski, Chidi Ajufo (last seen in "Get a Job"), Ricky Champ (last seen in "A Royal Night Out"), Max Croes, Kenneth Collard (last seen in "6 Days"), Richard Heap, Joanna DeLane, Muki Zubis, Alexander Bracq, David Witts (last seen in "The Beekeeper"), Wayne Gordon, Daniel Lundh (last seen in "Midnight in Paris"), Jose Conejo Martin, Eddie J. Fernandez (last seen in "The Mechanic"), Jade Coatsworth, Alana Boden, Leah Walker, Priyasasha Kumari, Jonathan Nyati, Kya Brame, C.C. DeNeira, Sophie Craig, Tom Vaughan, Andrea Vasiliou, Benjamin Schnau (last seen in "The Current War"). 

RATING: 6 out of 10 bags of cement