A Working Man (dir. David Ayer)

by Jack Martin | Mar 28, 2025

Certificate: 15

Running Time: 116 mins

UK Distributor: Warner Bros

UK Release Date: 28 March 2025

WHO’S IN A WORKING MAN?

Jason Statham, David Harbour, Michael Peña, Jason Flemyng, Arianna Rivas, Noemi Gonzalez, Emmett J. Scanlan, Eve Mauro, Maximilian Osinski, Max Croes, Kristina Poli, Andrej Kaminsky, Isla Gie

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

David Ayer (director, writer, producer), Sylvester Stallone (writer, producer), Bill Block, John Friedberg, Chris Long, Jason Statham and Kevin King Templeton (producers), Jared Michael Fry (composer), Shawn White (cinematographer), Fred Raskin (editor)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

A former operative turned construction worker (Statham) is tasked with finding a missing young woman…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON A WORKING MAN?

Last year, Jason Statham teamed with director David Ayer on The Beekeeper, an action movie perhaps best remembered for the absurd number of bee-related puns and allegories worked into the dialogue, and apparently their working relationship was so strong that the two are back together for A Working Man, which – to the disappointment of many – contains 100% fewer bee analogies, yet still manages to sting in a completely different fashion.

Unlike The Beekeeper, which solely has writer Kurt Wimmer to blame for its atrocious screenplay, Ayer is also a co-writer on A Working Man, along with none other than Sylvester Stallone who, after his recent White House appointment to be a “Special Ambassador” to Hollywood alongside Mel Gibson and Jon Voight, makes his highly conservative mindset very known here. Ayer merely enables it, in a film that offers little more than repugnant conspiracy-baiting thrills under the guise of championing the working-class, all while Statham growls and scowls his way through a thin and formulaic script that even he can’t liven up.

Based on Chuck Dixon’s novel Levon’s Trade, the film begins in Chicago where former Royal Marines Commando Levon Cade (Statham) has taken up the life of a construction worker for a family-run property business. However, when Jenny (Arianna Rivas), the teen daughter of his boss Joe (Michael Peña), is kidnapped by human traffickers during a night out, Levon is approached to use his former combat skills to find her and bring her home. But what starts out as a typical Taken-like rescue mission quickly turns into the uncovering of a full-blown operation involving the Russian mafia, drug kingpins, crooked cops, and the wealthy elite, all of whom the blue-collar Levon eventually comes up against.

It’s more or less the plot of any disposable Statham movie but with a significantly higher dose of right-wing pandering, as Ayer – in full director-for-hire mode here – presents a world filled with the kind of unpleasantness and corruption that a certain POTUS likes to spread fear about in campaign speeches (making it even more hilarious that the seemingly all-American hero is, in fact, an immigrant). Not that such things don’t exist in the real world, but the director and co-writer presents it all in such an extreme fashion that it often borders on straight-up propaganda, with mobsters and elitists depicted with the kind of cartoonish flamboyancy that you’d commonly find in a parody movie (one rich client is a mere cackle away from fully becoming Burgess Meredith’s Penguin from the 60s Batman series), while cabin-dwelling gun nuts like David Harbour – underused as a blind army veteran with facial hair and bodily attire that just screams “I voted for Gary Johnson in 2016” – are deemed safe enough to house vulnerable young children in. It’s likely all of that was Stallone’s contribution to the script, but Ayer is equally guilty for not stepping in to either tone it down or at least make it feel less obvious who it’s primarily meant to be for, and what kind of messages it wants to parrot toward them.

Another reason you can tell that A Working Man is aimed for a specific kind of person is that it thoroughly lacks compassion and humanity, as evidenced in its own unchallenged lead. There are never really any personal stakes for Statham’s character, as he barges through his opponents with the greatest of ease and the faintest of concern for whom he targets, whether they’re gangsters dressed like a Dumb and Dumber hip-hop tribute or Statham’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels co-star Jason Flemyng and his wildly fluctuating Russian accent. He defeats all these people so easily that you not only wonder why they’re deemed a threat in the first place, but also why he even bothers to take all these various detours – like briefly posing as a drug runner to get close to certain figures – to get the answers he could easily acquire within minutes of action. It’s hard to care for a hero that doesn’t appear to evolve or be challenged as the film goes along, with the closest equivalent being that he has and cares for a daughter whom he is struggling to gain custody of, but even that is more of an afterthought that doesn’t come into play at any point in this movie, leaving the fact that it’s Jason Statham playing him (who, quality of the movie aside, remains a highly watchable action lead) as the only reason that you’re remotely interested in this character.

As silly as The Beekeeper is, it at least has more self-awareness about how ridiculous it was, while also trying to go in a slightly different direction than normal. A Working Man, on the other hand, is derivative, drooling nonsense that is funny for all the wrong reasons (you’ll get so much unintentional laughter from the largest moon you’ve ever seen in the background of an action movie) and so uncomfortable in its over-the-top depiction of societal evil that it almost makes Sound of Freedom seem like a much subtler jab. Don’t be too shocked if the MAGA crowd rallies behind it, as will some of Stallone’s fellow Reagen-era conservatives, for it promotes the kind of America that they think is rotting their great land, when it is really them and their dubious orangutan-faced leader that are supplying all the rot they need to poison it for generations to come.

I never thought I’d be in a position where I’d be begging for Statham to keep doing more bee puns instead of this largely unworkable garbage, but here we are.

SO, TO SUM UP…

A Working Man is a derivative action-thriller that, despite Jason Statham’s reliable charisma, panders heavily to a right-wing crowd with its overly extreme view of a corrupt crime-ridden world, in a script by Sylvester Stallone and director David Ayer which constantly borders on pandering propaganda.