The Mechanic (2011)

Oh Statham. How did it get this far? 

He doesn't look like he should be the current foremost action hero does he? He doesn't even look like he should be the current foremost boiler engineer from British Gas and yet 10years'n'change after the first Transporter movie here we are. 

Who is i to try and knock the appeal of the beefy lug? I've probably seen 90% of his output.70% of it is inarguable shit; stuff like The Bank Job and War but i keep coming back and God love him, for not trying to do any romantic comedies or broad drama- he's the poster boy for sticking to what works.
So The Mechanic, a fairly meat and potatoes action revenge assassin dealy. Seriously this scenario has been rehashed so many times in movies, the likely only reason the producers went to the trouble of licensing the remake of an old Charles Bronson vehicle was so they could reuse the cool 'Mechanic' title.
But you know, Staths is great in this.

Everyone else however made a major mis-step by participating.

Ben Foster- I'm sure I've seen Ben Foster be good in something but i have no recollection of what that was or it was Ryan Gosling or Jared Leto- You guys all look the same to me.

Here he plays Statham's protégé- an idea in it's self which is patently preposterous; Foster has the physique and presence of a meth-addict; not attributes he tries to cover in this movie. Are meth-heads dangerous? Indubitably yes. Could they assassinate a despotic … despot? No.

Donald Southerland turns up and wheels around for 5mins presumably looking to see if he can pick up his cheque from petty cash. But as with most films, it's not the actors that are at fault- it's either the director or writing. 

Here it's both. Simon West can certainly do this variety of bullshit action movie- Con Air proved that and as much as Tomb Raider was a disappointment, i don't remember it being so horrible but he does a really crappy job here. I guess he's not used to small budget action pics but this looks crap. He'll be directing CSI Alberquerque by the end of the week. 

The soundtrack too is just weird noises, at points. It sounds like the stage manager of the Avalon stage at Glastonbury Ipod on random. But most at blame for the failure of this movie must be the writers. Oh deary me. There are better written episodes of Baywatch Nights. It's just indicative of most of the things about this movie- the writers probably turned in one draft and the producers didn't even look at it and when they did it was too late to punch it up but that would have been too much effort in the first place. It would have been better if the actors had just made up they're own lines.
I'm beginning to realise that Statham is the best thing in his films but in the end, that's a bit of a false economy and it takes more than one man to make a movie.

Hmmm- 10 Stathams in a movie?

...

Back off Neveldine/Taylor, this ones mine!


I watched The Mechanic (2010) at the cinema.
My 2011 in Movies will return with How Do You Know (2010)...