A Working Man

Mortar Him
Than You Think

A Working Man
Directed by David Ayer
UK/USA 2025
Black Bear Films
UK Cinema release print

A Working Man is an adaptation of one of 12 novels featuring the character Levon Cade, as written by Chuck Dixon, who I know best as a comic book writer on the likes of titles like Batman, The Punisher and The Savage Sword Of Conan etc. Now I’ve not read the book this movie is based on so I don’t know how well it holds up as an adaptation but it makes for a great action vehicle for Jason Statham, who plays Levon here. The movie is also co-written by the director and Sylvester Stallone and, you could see how Stallone might have played this character at some stage of his career.

The thing is, if you’ve seen the trailer or, for that matter, any other major Jason Statham action films, you know exactly what you are getting and, yeah, this one does exactly what it says on the tin, so to speak. But that’s not a bad thing and an hour or two of The Stath in killing and rescue mode is usually quite entertaining.

So yeah. After he retired from the marines due to his wife killing herself and their daughter being taken into care by her grandfather (who’s not a great person it has to be said), Levon spends his time juggling a two hour a week visitation with his loving daughter, sleeping in his car and working on a building site as a well respected leader of a construction team owned by a family who believed in him and gave him a chance to work after his troubles. However, a higher up thug and his client in the Russian mafia, who secures/traffics young ladies to give to his clients, grabs the very clever daughter of this family, Levon’s work friend Jenny (played brilliantly by Arianna Rivas). And so his boss and wife plead for Levon to track down and bring back their missing daughter. It would probably surprise nobody if I then said the main protagonist goes on a killing spree to find the daughter and, yeah, that’s exactly what he does here. Hindered by people like Jason Fleming as a Russian oligarch and helped by his ‘blinded in combat’ weapons expert, fellow ex-marine friend Gunny (played by the always fun to watch David Harbour).

And what else can I say... it’s Statham doing what he does best, making it all look easy (although I bet he went home some days with bruises and abrasions at the very least) and doing a heck of a good job as a ferocious, kick ass killer with some great ways of flushing out the bad guys and getting the information he wants. And, although this should go without saying, the main lead is able to do all this stuff because he’s actually a damned good actor who knows how to make this kind of activity look believable and even credible.

The film is quite crunchy and brutal in its depiction of violence (although not especially gory... it’s a finer balance of elements, I think, to get the trade off right in an action movie, say, as opposed to a horror film) and, of course, you certainly know who the good guys and the bad guys are here. There’s perhaps one loose end I would have liked to have seen tied up and that comes from the first action sequence near the beginning of the piece. Here, Levon has to save one of his fellow workers from some heavy handed criminals in order to signal to the audience that the central character can, as they say in professional circles, kick ass. Now, I personally think that Jason Statham brings enough baggage with him that you don’t even need that kind of set up for him but, you know, this will always be someone’s first film with him in and, they do a fine job setting it up here. However, my loose end is that I would have liked to know why the guy on the construction site was in trouble and, you know, what could be done about it to ensure it doesn’t happen to him again. But the scene serves purely as an introduction to Levon’s ‘special set of skills’, as the saying now goes and, yeah, it's certainly fit for purpose on that count, at any rate.

So, a big action flick which doesn’t skimp on the action, has a central character who has his heart in the right place and a bunch of bad guys you won’t worry about coming to a bone crunching end. A Working Man certainly does the job when it comes to an action packed night at the movies and I hope the writers and lead actor consider adapting another one of the books in the series at some point.