BLOGS
The Mechanic is the perfect example of the kind of movie that's really fun to get excited about when it's announced just because the pitch is so perfect -- Jason Statham remakes a bad-ass Charles Bronson hitman movie -- but that promptly fizzles the second you actually witness the cheap, lazy, cash-grabby way that pitch was executed. Movies like this are what make me curse my unconditional Statham love. I could've spent that 13 dollars on something useful! Like putting it towards a gun made up of other guns!
Jason Statham plays The Mechanic, an elite hitman employed by a shadowy front that pays him a lot of money for being the perfect assassination machine. But when a squad of his colleagues is gunned down by someone inside the agency, The Statham has to take out the man responsible -- his wheelchair-bound mentor, played by Donald Sutherland. (The wheelchair thing serves no purpose other than to facilitate a scene in which Sutherland shows off his freakishly impressive upper body strength by shimmying down some stairs while sitting on wheels. Not bad for a 75-year-old, even if it was wholly pointless.) Sutherland-on-Wheels' death greatly disturbs his already disturbed son (Ben Foster) who decides he'd like to go on a killing spree, and that his father's protégé The Statham is the one to teach him how to become a Mechanic. Gee, you don't suppose the kid might find out who really killed his father, do you? That sure would be awkward!
What follows is a clichéd training montage -- one that seems kind of unnecessary, considering how innately badass Foster's character already is -- and a bunch of plot twists and growing pains we're all familiar with. Foster goes out on his first job and nearly botches it because of his overreaching inexperience. Eventually he gets better, and they learn to trust each other, which is of course exactly when Foster figures out who killed his father. Oh, and about that? It turns out that Sutherland was set up by the agency, and that the guy The Statham knew from the slain squad is still alive and the one behind it all, a twist even the 12-year-old boys sitting in front of me saw coming. Then Foster and The Mechanic kill everyone involved in the frame job, but sort of boringly, to be honest, because apparently director Simon West put all his energy into crafting off-putting extreme close-ups during expository dialogue scenes and had little left over for crafting thrilling action. SUVs were driving through exploding buses, for crissakes, and I was stifling yawns. That hurts, coming from the man who made Con Air. It was like he only did this for the paycheck. (He definitely only did this for the paycheck.)
So yeah, not The Statham's best work. Or Ben Foster's, for that matter, who is actually a really great actor. Why does he not get better movies? Why can't I have my 13 bucks back? Why was there not a gun made up of other guns in this movie like I was promised? This is the kind of disillusionment that can only be righted by a Crank double feature.
See what Mechanic co-star Ben Foster had to say about gun porn in this interview.
Did you see The Mechanic? Tell us what you thought, then check out our list of Jason Statham facts! And read more movie reviews here!
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I saw this last night. I'm a big fan of Statham and of Bronson. For this sort of drive-in theatre 2nd feature film, this film more than fine, it was downright great! (XKE remark suppressed here!) I thought there was plenty of novel bloodshed and some good action. Ben Foster is perfect for this sort of role. I don't know how he'll ever climb out of being creepy, though.