Lots of guns = 1 gun.
Well imagine my surprise! After a career built on playing similar characters over and over it seems one Jason Statham is finally branching out. From this point on he will obviously no longer be the strong silent type who drives fast cars, shoots bad guys dead and casually loses his shirt a couple times a film before plowing the nearest hot chick in need.
Not anymore amigos.
In one of the more audacious developments in Jason Statham’s career he takes a role that has nothing to do with guns, violence or action by taking the lead role in a film revolving around a hard working grease monkey…
HEY WAYYYYT A MINUTE!
It seems I was hoodwinked by clever Hollywood marketing. Mr Statham is in fact Arthur Bishop, a deadly assassin who drives fast cars, kills bad guys and plows hot chicks – though in a huge change this particular one didn’t seem to be in any great need of anything aside from a dose of STATHAM!
(He also loses his shirt within the first 3 minutes of screentime. I wonder if he really needs to wear a shirt in the first place?)
When his beloved wheelchair bound boss (Donald Sutherland) and assigner of jobs is himself hit Bishop decides to apprentice the boss’s son Steve (Ben Foster), as allowing him to wallow in his remorse and rage filled self-pity is likely to see him dead anyway. Might I pause here and say that Foster has the good/bad combination of looking like the offspring of Giovanni Ribisi and Bradley Cooper? I’ll let you decide where the good/bad lies.
I think this image is from ALL of Jason Statham’s films.
After a three minute montage Steve is still raw and rough around the edges, but apparently proficient enough that Bishop assigns him jobs of his own. The first job is a little messy, but you have to expect that from your apprentices don’t you?
After all we all have to learn somewhere.
But sometimes when someone hires a professional to perform a task they can be sticklers for the rules, and allowing an apprentice to do the job doesn’t quite cut it, especially if they royally fuck it up.
In this case it leads to outside contractors being called in to ‘clean up’…
I have made mention (at great length) of the fact that Jason Statham is less an actor than a product, an indication of quality that allows a certain advance expectation from the audience before they even buy a ticket or read a review.
In that way he’s like Coke, even if you haven’t had one for a while you know roughly what it will taste like and there are no surprises once you pop the cap. It might not blow you away but it is reliable.
The Mechanic has none of the life and unpredictability of the Crank films, none of the humour of the Guy Ritchie films, none of the spark and dependability of the Transporter films.
Final Rating – 6 / 10. The Mechanic has a few scenes that are ok but… furthering the above analogy this isn’t The Real Thing, this Coke is flat.
One last point: I know films have running times, and I’m by no means suggesting someone needs to prove this using me as a guinea pig; but why does it take only 8 seconds or so to strangle someone on film??
