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A Working Man brings us Jason Statham (who last worked with director David Ayer in The Beekeeper) as Levon Cade – yes, they came up with yet another ridiculous name for an anti-hero.
He works on a building site and sees some baddies cause trouble to a younger colleague, leading to a fight where Cade hits them multiple times with metal buckets; but also constantly has a right face on because his wife topped herself, and so he’s all alone, except that while he has a daughter, Merry (Isla Gie), she lives with her grandfather, who blames Cade for his daughter’s death.
The old man wants to reduce his visitation rights, in a situation which doesn’t appear to get resolved by the end of the film, yet, still, it gives Cade a reason to have severe fiduciary issues.
When young Jenny Garcia (Arianna Rivas) is kidnapped in a nightclub by Viper (Emmett J Scanlan – who seems to play the bad guy in EVERY Channel 5 drama!) and Artemis (Eve Mauro), to be dragged into prostituation, she just happens to be the daughter of Cade’s boss, Joe (Michael Peña, putting in the least effort possible).
Cade hasn’t had much of a family life over time, hence he considers Joe’s family to be his ‘family’. As such, when Joe offers him a stack of cash, Cade says… no, for about five minutes, then does it anyway, since otherwise, we wouldn’t have much of a film.
Jason Flemyng (Boiling Point) puts on a terrible Russian accent as Wolo Kolisnyk, while having two henchmen who look like rejects from Goldie Looking Chain, and after spotting that some of his other henchmen are now brown bread, when they do meet, and while he could’ve stolen their cash, he tells Wolo, “I’m not a thief”.
Not the most snappy of quips.
There’s a bigger bad guy in Dimi Kolisnyk (Maximilian Osinski), but the biggest problem with A Working Man is that it has too many secondary baddies, all of whom are of the cardboard cut-out variety, and usually with ‘Allo ‘Allo-style attempts at Russian accents.
It also really drags at times. At almost two hours long, it could’ve easily have lost 20 minutes, especially since this film spends too much time spent going round in circles and getting nowhere. I expected better from a film directed by David Ayer, as well as his co-written script with Sylvester Stallone.
Cade drives a 4×4, which he states is “a tax write off“. I feel the same about this film(!)
Continuity is also absent, since said vehicle has a front number plate in one scene, then it doesn’t in the next, and it hasn’t been knocked off in a chase.
At times, it feels like Statham is channelling Bruce Willis’ Joe Hallenback character from The Last Boy Scout, but sadly, we don’t have Mr Willis in his hey-day. A shame we never got a sequel to that one at the time, but it wasn’t a massive hit at the time. Plus, Bruce has since retired, and director Tony Scott is sadly no longer with us.
Come on, Statham, your return to the Frank Martin role from Transporter in a new ad for Volkswagen shows that we need another one! And NOT with Ed Skrein. Statham didn’t make a further trilogy because, reportedly, he was offered it, but while each of his trilogy made more with subsequent films, he was offered LESS money for No.4-6!
This film also hints at a potential sequel, and there’s scope for it given that the Levon Cade character has a number of books written about him, but if they do make another, there’s a lot of issues to address which I’ve highlighted in this review.
Then again, I saw it on a Monday afternoon in the second week of release, and I was the only one in there!
To date, A Working Man has taken $67.5m at the box office, whilst having a budget of $40m, so won’t yet have broken even, since it needs to take up to three times the budget to do so, taking promotion into account.
Until any potential sequel comes along, I hope this ‘working man’ takes many a day off!
NOTE: There are no mid- or post-credit scenes.
A Working Man is in cinemas now, but isn’t yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD. However, once announced, it will appear on the New DVD Blu-ray 3D and 4K releases UK list.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 116 minutes
Release date: April 4th 2025
Studio: Amazon MGM Studios
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 (Anamorphic Panavision)
Rating: 4/10
Director: David Ayer
Producers: David Ayer, Bill Block, John Friedberg, Chris Long, Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Kevin King Templeton
Screenplay: Sylvester Stallone, David Ayer
Novel: Chuck Dixon (Levon’s Trade)
Music: Jared Michael Fry
Cast:
Levon Cade: Jason Statham
Wolo Kolisnyk: Jason Flemyng
Yuri: Merab Ninidze
Dimi Kolisnyk: Maximilian Osinski
Jenny Garcia: Arianna Rivas
Dougie: Cokey Falkow
Joe Garcia: Michael Peña
Gunny Lefferty: David Harbour
Carla Garcia: Noemi Gonzalez
Merry Cade: Isla Gie
Viper: Emmett J Scanlan
Artemis: Eve Mauro
Svetlana Kolisnyk: Kristina Poli
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.