It’s been a hot minute since I got to go to the theatres to watch a movie. 2024 was a busy year for me professionally, and 2025’s opening slate of films wasn’t anything to marvel at. This past week, however, I’ve had the pleasure of going to the theatre nearly daily to watch the latest movies from Bong Joon Ho, Steven Soderbergh, and the subject of this review: David Ayer’s A Working Man, starring Jason Statham, David Harbour, Michael Peña, and Arianna Rivas. The film follows veteran Levon Cade (Statham), a construction contractor who gets called back into the life he left behind when his boss, Joe Garcia’s (Pena) daughter Jenny (Rivas) is kidnapped one friday night. Cade’s investigation will lead him into the heart of the Russian mafia in England - and force him to come to terms with his violent nature. 

 

The screenplay, written by Ayer and Sylvester Stallone, provides enough of a frame for the film to come to life. Individual components of the film are deeply fascinating - such as the workings of the Russian Mob, the relationship between Cade, his daughter, Merry (Isle Gie), and his estranged father-in-law Dr. Jordan Roth (Richard Heap), or the Garcia family ideals. Each of these areas set interesting questions that our highly isolated protagonist has to contend with - most interesting to me is the juxtaposition between Cade’s lack of a family with the familial bonds present in the Garcia family business. The contrast of these two ideologies could create the friction necessary to change who Cade is by the end of the film. 

 

Tragically, David Ayer’s worst tendencies are on full display with A Working Man. Firstly, the story here is far too disjointed to work together. In a similar vein to Ayer’s Suicide Squad, there are multiple moving pieces in this picture that don’t seem to work together in long-term meaningful ways. Scenes have momentary consequences that rarely work together with other scenes to create meaning beyond the simple mechanical function of moving the plot forward. This, when added to the very different characters and layers that are present in the film - from the Garcia family, to the Russian mafia, to the motorbike gang, to Cade’s relationship with his own family, to Jenny’s side plot as a victim of human trafficking - make a film that is woefully unfocused. The character of Levon Cade is very slow to act - often carefully casing every area that he will go too - and these moments of slow-tension are often where the film is intercut with Jenny’s very tense storyline. It highlights the disconnect between these two storylines - the audience which is emotionally attached to Jenny begins to feel that Cade isn’t doing enough because he never shows emotion towards Jenny around those scenes - these moments are his most cold and cunning. 

 

Of course, this is made worse by the way that Cade is pulled into his own family drama throughout the film. There is a genuine ticking clock in the story, with Jenny missing - and when we are pulled into these small moments of melodrama, the viewer is left feeling that Jenny’s predicament isn’t actually as pressing as it would seem. All of this points towards the films major pacing problems, due to the poor editing of the film. Editor Fred Raskin may do an effective job at creating high intensity action sequences - but the major structure of the film is cut together awkwardly. 

 

Speaking of the editing, it’s worth noting the other major critical failure of the film: the cinematography/lighting. A Working Man is lit in a way that feels made for streaming - compared to the other theatrical releases I’ve seen this week - or the action movies that seem to have inspired it (like Taken or John Wick) - A Working Man is lacking the depth in it’s framing and lighting that would give it a truly cinematic feel. The lighting is often shallow - with the foreground objects over lit compared to the background - and this is a big problem for outdoor daytime scenes. When the film moves indoors, whether it’s the biking bar or a mafia mansion - the film’s lighting immediately feels far more purposeful - but for those daytime scenes, it becomes a distractor. Once again, this is accompanied with the poor framing - which makes dialogue sequences lose their verisimilitude and come off as apart of a daytime television soap opera. 

 

This of course also points to an editing problem - as the framing and lighting of action scenes often are made to maximize the immediate moment to moment scramble. The high-impact filmmaking has it’s benefits and uses - The Bourne Supremacy is a great example of this.  This style requires the film to establish a rhythm and the geography of action scenes which allows the audience to infer what is about to occur. A Working Man, is a mixed bag when it comes to the action beats. Some set pieces have great geography that pulls the audience in - but equally many are cut to hell and made to be incomprehensible. And in all the action, there is a great lacking of coherency. A Working Man never feels like a larger piece than it’s individual moments - and part of the problem is Cade’s inability to be in severe danger. 

 

While Statham is a great actor, who can be extremely charismatic as an English veteran with a don’t give a shit attitude, the film doesn’t lean enough into that charisma to carry the film. A Working Man is the most American England has ever felt to me - partially because Cade’s vehicle of choice is a Ford F-150. As a whole, Statham gives a very tempered performance - and while it works, it doesn’t offer enough to warrant sitting through this very distracted film. The other performances are solid - the mobsters are truly levels of cruel and evil that warrant a liscence to kill. And David Harbour is especially great in the role of Gunny Lefferty - a member of Cade’s squad. Harbour’s performance is reserved, humorous, and reverent in all the ways that makes for a character you immediately empathize with and trust. Rivas is especially convincing as Jenny - playing both the quick-witted genius daughter and the compassionate friend that immediately validates the stakes of the film. Her performance is empowering - never submitting to fear, but constantly fighting against the horror with spite and stubbornness. Its a great performance for a character that is both the driving force of the plot and far too absent to truly work. Lastly, the child actor Isla Gie is alright as Merry - though she does struggle with the frankly stiff dialogue given to Merry’s character. The cracks in the script are on full display with Merry - and that is a tragedy. 

 

At the end of the day, A Working Man is a Jason Statham action film about killing Russian gangsters profiting off of human trafficking. Any level of thematic depth that could be mined from the rest of the setup is left untouched - A Working Man is purely a surface level movie. If the premise appeals to you, you’ll have a good time. But when films like Black Bag and Mickey 17 are playing, with a hundred times the style and depth of A Working Man - I’d personally put watching those films first.