Former Royal Marine Commando Levon Cade (Jason Statham) now works construction for the kindly Garcia family. But when Jenny Garcia (Arianna Rivas) is kidnapped Levon must use the skills he learnt in his former life to save her. 

Of course Levon is a complicated man whom we should all love for his service to his country and his efforts to be a good dad. We learn that his American wife committed suicide at some point whilst he was a Marine and his father-in-law hates him for it. It’s ok though as his precocious daughter still loves him. He even decides to rent a hideous one bedroom apartment instead of sleeping rough in his car to make sure he still keeps visitation rights. He also loves the Garcia family as they took him in when he most needed it. With all of this information fed to us fairly quickly after a cheesy credits sequence showing the close working relationship between the British and US armed forces that includes bullet casings merging into screws, we know all that we need to about this average working man. 

Cue the hugely cliche Russian mob kidnapping Jenny and Levon can now approach his old US special forces friend (David Harbour) to be his ‘weapons sommelier”. At this point I was hoping for all of this overwrought cheesiness to develop into a trashy action flick but I was disappointed. Action only comes sporadically as we watch Levon surveil the Russians. Something that seems totally pointless as it usually ends in a far from stealth approach. And then when the action does happen it is mostly in very dark rooms with an exuberant amount of cuts making it hard to follow. 

Based on the 2014 novel Levon’s Trade by Chuck Dixon, A Working Man reunites director David Ayer with star Jason Statham for their second film together in two years. Unfortunately this one does not capture quite the same silly fun that The Beekeeper did. Ayer co-writes with Statham’s Expendables co-star Sylvester Stallone, so it is clear what the tone of the film is trying to be. But these sort of films always dabble with a balancing act between patriotic and earnest cheese and ass-kicking action. This one unfortunately falls over into the former. 

The only thing to possibly get behind in a ‘so bad it’s good’ manner is the way that the Russian mobsters seem to have some ludicrous blend of fashion sense from The Matrix and The Fifth Element! Otherwise the first word I wrote in my review notes as I left the cinema was “terrible”. 

With another ten books available to adapt in the Levon Cade series I suspect Ayer/Stallone/Statham were looking for a franchise. But with The Beekeeper 2 in development it would seem the more likely suspect for this creative group to follow.