[Movie Review] A Working Man (2025)
Plot Summary: Levon Cade left his profession behind to work construction and be a good dad to his daughter. But when a local girl vanishes, he's asked to return to the skills that made him a mythic figure in the shadowy world of counter-terrorism.
Director: David Ayer
sdfsWriters: Sylvester Stallone, David Ayers
Runtime: 1 hour 56 mins
Main Cast:- Jason Statham as Levon Cade
- Michael Peña as Joe Garcia
- David Harbour as Gunny Lefferty
Review by: Samuel
What I Liked
In my time doing reviews, this might be the worst movie I’ve ever seen. So bad that I can’t imagine how it was released in the year 2025. I think after the success of Beekeeper (which I’m guessing was a surprise) David Ayer and the studio thought they could give us this phoned in version. And notice I’m saying this in the “What I liked” section- well that’s because there was not one thing I liked in this film.
If I had to say something, I can say that at the very least it looked like a film- as in, it looks like it had a budget.
What I didn’t like
My last sentence only goes as far as looks, because this felt like a student film. A BAD student film. Everything went wrong in this movie direction, acting, editing, plot, pacing, choreography- I don’t have time to explain it all. Let’s just say it was so bad that me or you (yes YOU reading this) could walk in off the street and give as good a performance as was on display in the film. EVERY ACTOR was awful – even Michael Pena who we know can act just seemed like he was reading lines (badly) from a teleprompter. What was David Ayer doing in his director’s seat. We have cringe one liners delivered in ways that make you think it was done in one take. There is a scene where an actual human person screams “NOOOOOOOOO” just like Darth Vader in “Return of the Sith”….and this is something we are supposed to taker seriously. Aside from the horrendous acting, this movie couldn’t even get the action right. The previous collaboration with Statham and Ayer, Beekeeper, may have been basic in plot but had a cool factor with the action. Statham is essentially supposed to be the same kind of one-man army here…but he isn’t. There isn’t one scene where it feels like he put fear in people’s hearts or cleared a room easily. In the few scenes he does have there are jump cuts and shaky cam. When there’s a firefight, it looks like something you’d see in a dramatization in a documentary- meaning, pretty unbelievable deaths. And when I say unbelievable, I don’t mean cool looking, I mean I don’t believe it. Bodies are falling in ways they just wouldn’t if a person was shot. I have to believe there wasn’t a stunt coordinator/choreographer on staff OR there was a tight schedule so Statham and the others didn’t have time to learn any choreography.
And before I forget to mention, this entire movie banks on you believing that in one scene change Statham’s character has a complete change of heart off screen. Literally in one scene he says “I can’t get involved” and the VERY NEXT SCENE he is getting ready to become involved. Like, come on! Who edited this thing?
Summary
Look, this is a bad movie that no one watch. I haven’t even gotten to the “bad guys”, the “investigation” or any other parts of the plot nor have I touched on the pacing of this sub 2 hour movie. It wasted my time, and I won’t waste yours- it’s all bad and that’s the bottom line.
