Have you ever walked into a movie 99 percent blind? Literally the only things I knew about this movie were that Jason Statham was in it and that I’d heard zero reviews or comments about it. And that it was an action movie. Having that information I had an interesting experience.
The Mechanic is your standard Jason Statham movie. He’s a hitman and he has a job he doesn’t want to do. Then some boohoo’s and then he picks up a teen sidekick played to perfection by Ben Foster. Now for the spoilers.
Yes Spoilers.
Turn back now.
Too Late.
So the first act consists of Jason killing a dude, meeting up with his friend who is one of the partners in a company that sends out hitmen. This friend is played by Donald Sutherland. Or as I call him Exposition Man. Because he really serves no purpose other than exposition and isn’t interesting until he’s dead.
Yeah he dies. See you know how I mentioned he was a partner in this operation? Well the other guy shows Statham some info that says he’s a traitor (News flash, he was lying) so Statham makes it look like a normal mugging. Now this set up scene is one of the two best moments in the whole movie.
Now Statham is all sad because he killed his friend. So he goes and visits his hooker friend and his alcoholic boat friend. They are Zero consequence. But then he goes to the cemetery and finds Donald’s son, played by Ben Foster. Ben is awesome as he often is, and plays this almost an asshat guy who is looking for revenge. So he goes out and tries to kill some carjackers(thinking his dad was murdered by carjackers) and Statham stops him and then quickly ends up taking him on as an apprentice hitman. It is at this point that Statham becomes completely unimportant and every character arc and development is put on Ben’s character. They do a couple jobs and eventually because of some Deus Ex Machina intervention from the writer, the plot moves to taking out the guy that betrayed Statham. As they get most of the way through the steps to find the guy, Ben discovers that his mentor killed his father. And so he starts plotting. He doesn’t take immediate vengeance. He builds it up. He plans. And in the meantime we as an audience get some delightfully delectable moments where Statham and Ben have awkward conversations. Leading up to some very heavy handed dialogue followed by what seems like a great scene at the time. We see Ben pump gas onto the car and into it, walk away and then fire a gun at the gas can. It is an explosion. Wheeeeeee. And it looks like Statham died. And had it ended there and this had all been about handing the torch off this would have been a GREAT film. But the good guy, aka the lead, had to win so we find out from security footage Statham rolled out of the car, and that he left some explosives on a car and actually blows Ben up thus negating any possible good moments. The real sad part about all of this is this could have been a really good drama had they put a capable actor who has some kind of depth of emotions in the part of Statham. It isn’t a perfect fix, but a different actor in that part would have solved some problems. The rest are just the clichés that bog down most action movies. This is the kind of movie where it throws around cool ideas but never fully executes them. Now when it comes to action, it is on par with say The Expendables and Machete. But the best parts, the soul has been frankensteined back into a shell that probably didn’t need it. I wish I could take this plot and build a good drama out of it. And I bet I could too. Oh and the title really doesn’t mean a lot. It’s a term mentioned once or twice as another name for a hitman but really feels forced like they needed to justify the title to a movie going audience who is deaf, dumb and blind. Unless you are Ben Foster the acting is mediocre at best. The directing is okay, but there are a few times, especially early, where the director isn’t clear with the editing to give us a sense of what is going on. And also it looks bad. Like the picture itself looks Last Airbender with 3D glasses bad. I don’t recommend watching this film, you know, ever. But if you have to, it does work as a pop corn flick and will get you through the hour and a half run time perfectly sound.
All in all, I think foreknowledge only really affects your expectations and not the film going experience as a whole. All in all, this film wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t good either. Grade is a C.
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