In a post last week I was lamenting the fact that there are no young, new action stars working, and I named Jason Statham as one of today’s good, but few, action heroes. Statham‘s latest action film, The Mechanic, opens in theaters Friday and after seeing the film last night, I can definitely recommend that you should find something else to do with your $10 this Friday, but if you ever get a chance to catch the movie under cheaper circumstances it’s worth a look for some excellently choreographed action sequences.
The Mechanic, a remake of the 1972 film starring Charles Bronson, is about Arthur Bishop (Statham), an assassin whose specialty is to make his targets’ deaths look like accidents. The film owes a lot to the James Bond franchise — the pre-title sequence features Bishop creatively drowning a Columbian drug lord to give us an idea of who he is and how he does it, just like the typical Bond pre-credit sequence. There’s even a woman, Sarah, played by fashion model Mini Anden, who, like the typical Bond girl, does little else except provide nudity as the film implies she regularly has sex with Bishop despite not even knowing his name or anything about him. Now I’m not one to complain about seeing a beautiful woman naked in a movie, but to give you an idea of how thin her character is I had no idea what the character’s name was despite seeing the film last night and had to check IMDB. Her unbelievable character seems to just exist to flash us the goods and to show us that Bishop is an ultra-manly “cool” guy, but we already get that by seeing the creative ways he kills his targets.
In fact, that is the real strength of the film: the action sequences are awesome and it’s interesting to see how the filmmakers came up with the unique ways Bishop kills his targets. In particular, in one scene Bishop fights a rival assassin in the confines of a public bus — a scene which definitely seems inspired by the fight in the similarly confined train car in From Russia With Love in another Bond swipe — Bishop uses the everyday objects around him to get the best of his rival. The use of extra-sharp everyday objects elevates the level of gore to almost horror film quality, and there were numerous people in the theater around me squirming or gasping as Bishop found out how to use the unexpected to cause major damage.
Another action sequence made me realize that perhaps The Mechanic would have been better off as a television series. When Bishop is commissioned to kill Vaughn (John McConnell), a leader of a new age religious cult, the half-hour of planning and implementing the kill would have made a compelling episode of an assassin television series. As great as the sequence is, it doesn’t serve much of a storyline purpose in the film except to stretch the film to its already short 92 minute runtime.
And that brings me to the movie’s story. Typically I start my reviews by giving a general description of the film’s story. I haven’t done that here because the weakest part of the movie is its predictable story. Bishop is assigned to kill his boss and mentor Harry McKenna (Donald Sutherland) by Harry’s partner Dean (Tony Goldwyn) because Dean claims that McKenna sold out five of their assassins on their last job. Sutherland is great as usual as an old soldier, but is barely in the film before Bishop kills him. After killing Harry, Bishop is approached by Harry’s son Steve (Ben Foster), who wants Bishop to train him to become an assassin, and, if possible, hunt down his father’s killer (who unknown to him, of course, is Bishop). If you cannot figure out who the true villain of the film is within the first thirty minutes — or even just from my description — you haven’t watched enough action films. The story is wholly paint-by-numbers action film writing, and in particular the last ten minutes of the film are so tell-tale that even though I haven’t seen the original film it was obvious how it would end. I was disappointed that director Simon West and screenwriters Richard Wenk and Lewis John Carlino (although since Carlino wrote the original film, I have no idea how much input he had on this remake’s script) totally went the outright predictable route. Though there certainly are “twists” to the ending, they can be seen coming so far away that it’s like playing manhunt with someone wearing glow in the dark clothing.
So is The Mechanic worth seeing? Not if you’re paying full price for the ticket, but certainly check it out on bargain night or when it hits the cable networks, Netflix, or Redbox, because the action sequences are really well done — in fact, you’ll find yourself waiting for the next scene just to see how the filmmakers will top the previous one. If you’re looking for an action film in the theaters this weekend, go for True Grit if you haven’t caught it yet. The Mechanic simply doesn’t offer anything original enough in the action genre to pack the theaters or deserve your hard-earned dollars.
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