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Levon Cade (Jason Statham) is a working man. It’s the title of the movie he’s in, and it’s also a line of dialogue said out loud during the movie he’s in. In a scene where a drug dealer Cade is forced to consort with clocks him as former military, the drug dealer, a veteran himself, tells him knowingly, “You’re a working man.” Here, a great gasp of relief can be expended from the audience. 

This wry, winking absurdity might seem deliberate in the second collaboration between director David Ayer and Statham where the British actor plays a blue-collar laborer who doubles as an unstoppable killing machine. But from the content and tone of Ayer’s latest, and Ayer’s general oeuvre of spotty cop corruption flicks and one Suicide Squad, it wouldn’t be wise to place a bet on A Working Man (adapted from Chuck Dixon’s novel Levon’s Trade by Ayer and none other than Sylvester Stallone) being droll enough to recognize its own silliness. Not that that’s a bad thing; Cade barrels through bare-knuckled brawls with Russian gangsters on a warpath to find the kidnapped daughter of his boss, and no man or woman alive co*es even close to stopping him. Irony can be a poison, so the sincerity of this effort is often what’s so amusing about this spiritual sequel to 2024’s The Beekeeper.

Cade, a Royal military veteran living in Chicago, works his days in construction for a family-owned land developer while he spends his off-hours trying to prove he’s a good dad not riddled with PTSD. His dead wife’s father, Dr. Roth (Richard Heap), some sort of woo-woo spiritual psychologist, shares custody of Cade’s daughter and heavily limits contact with her biological dad. Dr. Roth believes that Cade’s trauma response from the war makes him prone to violent outbursts, and he’s working with his lawyers to further restrict Cade’s already paltry visitation hours with his child. Yet an altercation between Cade’s coworker and two gangsters who approach him on-site doesn’t do much to dispel the prejudices of his father-in-law. Cade goes beast mode on both men, a hydrogen bomb vs. two crying babies, leaving them a limp pile of shattered bones while he walks away unscathed. The daughter of Cade’s boss, Jenny (Arianna Revas) witnesses the massacre, but as the two are buddies, she promises she won’t rat Cade out to her dad: “Snitches get stitches.”

But Cade’s boss, Joe (Michael Peña) claims he can spot a former Green Beret from “a mile away.” When Jenny doesn’t co*e home after a night out clubbing with friends, Joe decides he’s going to need more than a couple of donut-munching cops to track down the degenerates who took her from him. He needs a man who will stop at nothing and be impeded by no bureaucratic obstacles in order to bring his child home safely, and brother, that’s Levon Cade. During a vaguely right-wing-paranoia-prodding plot in which Jenny has been nabbed off the street by human traffickers, Cade plays a bone-breaking Columbo as he sleuths out her last whereabouts. The hot trail leads him progressively upwards in co*mand to a series of Russian mafioso, whom he expectedly does away with as cleanly as the femurs he snaps. There’s even a brief little Guy Ritchie reunion between Statham and Jason Flemyng, the latter playing a Russian mobster. A brief interrogation results in Cade drowning the man in his own pool as he leaves an ever-widening trail of destruction behind him in his quest for vigilante justice. 

This plot summary might make A Working Man seem more propulsive and engaging than it actually is. Like The Beekeeper, the film suffers from the same case of dreary tedium which spoils any enjoyment—although, The Beekeeper certainly had more buoyancy in its tone. A Working Man is as dingy and dark as its cinematography. Though these visuals certainly match the content of the film, there isn’t nearly enough going for it elsewhere to make up for it. There’s a co*plete lack of stakes. Regardless of whether or not that contract where Statham can’t lose fights has extended to other projects, it’s beyond obvious that Cade will emerge triumphant in every encounter, vanquish every single trafficking acco*plice, and deliver Jenny back to her parents’ arms with a bow on her head. If the laughably clichéd dialogue is going to be this predictable, the narrative surely will be, too.

There’s never a question of who will co*e out victorious in the end. It’s only a question of when, and at nearly two hours, the answer to “When?” is “Too long.” The beats beco*e terribly repetitive even when the fight choreography is at times satisfying, and the R-rating at least allows for some CGI blood spurts. But in spite of the dreary tedium, there are moments of genuine levity that shine through the gloom, be they intentional or not. For every Russian mobster Cade defeats in co*bat, there’s another up the ladder waiting to shake his head in dismay at the carnage Cade left behind, muttering “How could this happen? How could this happen?” like Tony Soprano. Later scenes taking place outside at night bear an unreasonably gigantic moon hanging in the background like someone pasted it on in Photoshop. And in maybe the best scene of the whole film, Cade’s daughter tells an ungrateful post-rescue Roth that, “he could’ve left you in there, Grandpa.”

Aspects like these briefly elevate A Working Man, though it’s evident that Ayer and Stallone aren’t quite introspective enough to have written dialogue that’s purposefully absurd. But again, the charm of this unintentionality is never able to uplift the entire film. After Cade has run through every Russian mobster he’s encountered, the elderly don of the Russian syndicate ends the film with a vengeful gleam in his eye. It’s meant to hint at a sequel should the box office prove as favorable towards A Working Man as it did for The Beekeeper. Perhaps Ayer intends to create an entire universe of Jason Statham movies in which the grizzled actor plays a series of men in otherwise mundane jobs who double as do-gooding executioners, eventually leading to a crossover film event. Imagine: Five or six Jason Stathams teaming up against Thanos. Unfortunately, that would require a level of acuity that Ayer likely has no access to. Whatever the future holds for the next Statham/Ayer collaborations, A Working Man is a largely tiresome action flick that can’t overco*e the pedestrian trappings of its filmmakers’ own banality.

Director: David Ayer

Writer: David Ayer, Sylvester Stallone

Starring: Jason Statham, Michael Peña, David Harbour

Release Date: March 28, 2025