When the deceitful actions of a cunning but beautiful woman named Gina (Jessica Alba) force him to return to the life he left behind, Arthur Bishop’s (Jason Statham) life is in danger as he has to complete an impossible list of assassinations of the most dangerous men in the world.
My experience of Jason Statham (in action films at least because I loved him in Spy) has been limited to only the Transporter series. That experience does not include the previous Mechanic film, which itself was a remake to a 1972 film that I haven’t seen either. Don’t worry if you haven’t seen the previous film (because most people didn’t) as you should have no problem with this one. Even if you haven’t seen it, you probably already saw it in one form or another.
Arthur Bishop (Statham) thought he had gotten away from his assassin past but when a beautiful woman in distress comes along in Gina (Alba). She forces him back once she is taken by a group of dangerous men led by a man named Craine (Sam Hazeldine) with whom Bishop has past history. In order to get her back, Bishop must perform a series of assassinations all around the world. What was special about these assassinations were that they had to be accidents.
The beginning was when the plot fell apart. Things never seemed to make much sense and snowballed from there. Suffice it to say that this film requires a lot of suspension of belief in order to enjoy it. This fact did not really come as much of a surprise. This wasn’t always possible, however, as practical aspects of the film were decent, like the fight choreography, but most of the film’s special effects was hard to take. The film relied heavily on CGI during action sequences which is okay in general but since they were so terrible here, they distracted from what was happening on screen.
The story itself wasn’t overly original and was another cliched revenge story. The plot wasn’t exactly that interesting and was more on the bland side but many people probably won’t care since it’s just an excuse to see Statham beat people up. And he beat up a lot of people here, it seemed like he was facing an endless lineup of stupid henchmen. The fact that it was so easy for him made things less exciting with the novelty of it going away pretty fast. Again, people will probably not care about this but there should be more purpose to what was happening.
Watching Bishop plan his various assassinations was kind of exciting and he was kind of ingenious as a character but that’s not saying much compared to everyone else around him. Some of the things he was able to do here defied belief which was also not much of a surprise considering how the rest of the film went. This added to the allure of the character. Besides Bishop, there wasn’t much to any of the other characters as they were all rather one-dimensional. Gina served little purpose and her relationship with Bishop felt forced and lacked chemistry. Craine was a boring and cliched villain.
The acting was okay with Statham being exactly what you would expect here in a role that was never a stretch for him. He didn’t really need to act too much here as he mostly just beat a lot of people up. Alba was not that great as Gina but she didn’t have much to do. She was the cliche female and distress and had no chemistry with Statham which made their scenes almost cringe-worthy. Michelle Yeoh was wasted as one of Bishop’s old friends named Mei. Tommy Lee Jones was also criminally wasted as one of Bishop’s assassination targets. He was a little fun playing a much different role than usual. His screen time was much less than the trailers implied.
Overall, this was a bad action film with a silly plot, bad special effects, okay action, and okay performances.
Score: 5/10
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The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.
