Jason Statham’s last movie, The Beekeeper, featured a villain who was the President’s corrupt son engaging in massive business grifting and fraud while blowing his loot on drugs and hookers. Statham’s character, “Adam Clay,” was a sort of ruthless, pitliess golem activated to take down the bad guys, no matter how connected. Now that Joe and Hunter Biden are out of office, Statham picks a new theme to offer up cinematic MAGA fare: sex trafficking by violent criminal immigrants.
Working Man steals its plot from Liam Neeson’s movies where he has “very special skills.” The writers include both Sylvester Stallone and some of the peeps behind The Beekeeper, but the story is about a girl who has been “taken,” and as it turns out is being auctioned off as a sex toy, just not to a Saudi prince. And the girl is not Statham’s daughter, but that of old friends. Who know that their old friend Levon Cade was previously something much more dangerous than the Chicago-land construction site manager he is now. (“Levon” by the way is Armenian for “lion,” and “Cade” is Brittonic for “battle.”)
A twist for the MAGA audience: the girl taken is a Carla Garcia, a Hispanic American. And the violent immigrant criminals who have taken - really harvested - her are the palest Russians we’ve ever seen, who’ve ended up in Illinois. The Russian mafia itself does not kidnap girls and sex traffic them; they’re very organized and have councils and a hierarchy and enforcers who make sure none of their own threaten their ongoing enterprise.
But like the Bidens, the Russians have a bad son, who runs his own operation out of a rural roadhouse in the countryside outside Joliet, Illinois. His crew snap photos of hot girls in Chicago clubs and then offer to rufi or chloroform, kidnap, and deliver them to wealthy perverts. Pay, prey, and play.
The bad son is played by tall, super masculine, 8 pack sporting Maximilian Osinski, an actor who plays soccer star Zava on Ted Lasso. But you won’t recognize him. Here he is a long-haired, makeup- and earring-wearing, Eurotrash metrosexual, clothed in Liberace outfits. Weirdly he is the spitting image of the long-haired metrosexual vampire Amilyn that Paul Reubens played in the 1992 movie Buffy, The Vampre Slayer. And the Russian mafia members are all so pale and Goth that they look like vampires. And the Joliet roadhouse looks like a creepy witch’s house. It almost seems like the people behind Working Man were desperate to make the victim a girl of color, and the villains so white that they couldn’t even be normal mortal white people. (In Beekeeper Statham is seeking vengeance for the death of his close friend and neighbor played by Claire Huxtable, Phylicia Rashad.) The result is a visually very weird film that makes you wonder about the choices made in making it, even as you may enjoy the somewhat successful production of Taken 4.
A version of this was published last week at SpliceToday.
I've tried a few times, but never could make it more than ten minutes into any Jason Statham movie. Of course, the same is true of much Liam Neeson, like Taken 3. But I am enjoying the Netflix version of this called The Madness, which has put considerable effort into developing credible characters, scenarios, and thoughtful dialogue.
Just because the author is a friend, forgive my "ackshully..." A Working Man is based on my friend Chuck Dixon's Levon Cade series :)