MOVIE REVIEW | A Working Man

In this A Working Man review, you will find affiliate links to pre-order the 4K physical release.
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I mentioned in my review for A Minecraft Movie that it wasn’t the only movie I watched that weekend. Here’s the other one! Minecraft was with the boy, A Working Man I went to watch with the teen. He’s much more action oriented and is in the mind set that no movie is worth watching unless there’s some combination of guns, violence, and/or death. Do we probably need to have some talks with him? Oh, most definitely! But that’s another post. For now, let’s talk about A Working Man.

Jason Statham should be his own genre. I mean, is he? Unofficially, he has to be. Much like Jack Black, when you go to watch a Statham movie, you know what you’re getting into. And this one is not any different. OMG, can we please get a Jason Statham and Jack Black action comedy?! Talk about an awesome buddy cop movie. Anyway, the teenager (and myself) wanted to originally watch Captain America which has been out for a few weeks now. It’s actually really close to being released on video (yes, video, old habits die hard). So considering that, together with the fact that we like to own all the Marvel movies physically (that’s another post too), we made a choice. We went to watch something different and instead of double dipping on Captain America, just wait to watch it at home in 4K. 

As soon as I saw A Working Man was in theaters, I knew that was the winner. I actually got caught watching the trailer on YouTube when it played as an ad one day. It made me not click skip so I knew I was into it. I even told myself I would totally watch that in theaters. Generally speaking, I’m not about having an overly violent movie as my first pick when watching something. I’m much more of a fantasy/sci-fi/story driven kind of guy. Now, that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy straight up action heavy stuff. On my top 5 list of preferred genres, action is there, but it’s just not my first pick. 

A Working Man definitely checked all the boxes for me. I was into the story and what was going on from the get go. For me, it’s the very definition of a popcorn flick. You get caught up in what’s happening to the characters, things start happening that make you say “awww snap, he’s gonna be mad now!” And sure enough, it starts to hit the fan. And when it does, you’re happy to get splattered with it because you want to see the bad guys get what they have coming. And boy, do they get it! 

So what’s the downside? While the story was entertaining and intriguing, it’s also fairly typical in its execution. 

You’ve seen this movie before. Good guy living his honest  life, minding this own business. In come the bad guys doing their random bad guy BS they think they can do, and they step all over the good guy’s freshly raked tranquility sand, forcing him out of retirement. Because it turns out good guy is really a one man army with every cheat code available and he just mows through everyone as if they’re first level enemies. Rinse and repeat, all the way to the end, roll the credits. 

BUT. If you like these movies, then you know what it’s going to be, and there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s plenty of them out there, you know what they are. John Wick is the biggest one, if you’re not familiar. So really, when you take a step back and think about it, what you’re really going to watch is not the story of redemption or justice. You already know that to be a given.

What you’re really going to go watch is all the different ways the bad guys are going to get straight up murked. You know the good guy is going to get all strapped up and be a walking one man wrecking crew. But how bad ass is it going to be? That’s the question. It’s predictable, and you know it’s going to be that way. But the action and intensity of how it’s carried out is the measuring stick these movies are placed against. It’s what makes them great.

And I could say easily, A Working Man does a great job with it! I was into it so much, and was so into every piece of scum getting served the justice they deserve, that by the time it got to the ending, it took everything in me to not cheer as if it was the climax of a Marvel movie. I feel like I would’ve been judged in the small theater we watched it in, but I was that satisfied with the story and entertained enough to be that into it. 

So that that as you will! What do you think? Do you like movies like this? Are you silently judging me for wanting to cheer the death of baddies? Let me know!

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