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‘Mechanic: Resurrection’ Finds Statham Back In His Element (Movie Review)

It is one thing to write about awful Jason Statham films (War, Parker, In the Name of the King) or the terrific ones (Crank, Safe, The Bank Job), but how about the middle-of-the-road ones? Mechanic: Resurrection falls decidedly in the middle of the Brit action star’s best efforts and there is really nothing wrong or great about that. The bigger question may be just how many people remember 2011’s The Mechanic to begin with. Don’t worry though, as this film is far too generic to be all that concerned with intense continuity.

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Rather than looking at ‘Resurrection’ as a sequel, you would be much better off in positioning the story as a long tale told by Statham’s hilarious Rick Ford character in Spy. Just try it out like this:

“One time I was caught off guard at a brunch in Rio and ended up jumping from a moving elevator onto a hang glider in midair. I also blew up a bunch of boats to save Jessica Alba’s life from my evil childhood friend. There was also a time where I escaped a prison after killing a guy with his own staff, only to avoid sharks thanks to some handy shark repellent. And did I mention the time I shot a guy from more than an entire city away. Lastly, I once used a guy’s own pool on a skyscraper to murder him, before sliding down the side of a building to escape.”

These are just some of the impossible feats Statham is a part of in this hitman thriller, which tasks a retired contract killer, Arthur Bishop, to commit elaborate assassinations in order to rescue the newest love of his life (Alba). It is straightforward plotting, despite the amount of mind-boggling effort that goes into some of these assassinations, but it actually kind of works at being entertaining. And yes, that includes enjoying the sight of Tommy Lee Jones sporting a soul patch, while wearing a robe and slippers (he was paid well for all 7 minutes of his screentime).

The joy comes from director Dennis Gansel (We Are The Night) fully committing to the nonsense. While he shoots a lot of the action to close for comfort (as is the standard these days, sadly), he rarely allows the film to stop and analyze the absurdity. The film is constantly absurd in its choices, but it has that key element that makes it all go down easy – Statham.

With a dedication to performing most of his action sequences in shorts and with no shoes, Statham constantly reminds the audience that he is incredibly watchable on his own. While plenty of fun in Furious 7 and tolerable in the forgettable Expendables films (as Lee Christmas, respectfully), it is great to see another solo action outing from the man once known as Chev Chelios. While not required to do much emotional acting (I’ll say again – Safe is great), you get the physicality of Statham all the way through this lean action effort that only tries so hard to make a lick of sense.

It’s practically refreshing to see a movie so committed to being as standard as possible. You get a retired hitman going back on the job to save a damsel in distress. The film has a euro trash villain (Sam Hazeldine) for us to mock. Plenty of henchmen are killed with no further thought. Exotic locations are here aplenty, when the film doesn’t mix it up with action set on boats or in underground bunkers. The only thing missing is a classic one-liner, which I’ll suggest now – Mechanic: “You’ve just been fixed.”

Is the film “good”? Not really. Nothing ever feels all that authentic and a dedication to showing Bishop’s process is fairly laughable, regardless of how seemingly clever it all is. However, the film is enjoyable in its stupidity. While The Mechanic was grounded in some sense of reality, this film goes overboard (literally), whenever it can. Both films seem to suffer from having action scenes thrown in whenever it feels like there has been too much talking and a studio head gets nervous, but this one packs in plenty of silliness. Sometimes that is all you need. For an average Statham film, this one does the trick.