The Mechanic raises many deep and thoughtful questions about serious topics and life decisions. For instance: is it really necessary to show the bloody impact of a man falling off a building during an action sequence? Turns out that the answer is no. Also, should Jason Statham ever have an annoying sidekick who isn’t an attractive woman? The answer is also no.
However, the biggest question the film raises, and the one that doesn’t have an answer is why they didn’t just make a Transporter 4 or Crank 3. After all, both those franchises just had disappointing entries and The Mechanic doesn’t offer anything new up. Maybe a full review of the film will flesh out an answer, but I doubt it.
The Mechanic raises many deep and thoughtful questions about serious topics and life decisions. For instance: is it really necessary to show the bloody impact of a man falling off a building during an action sequence? Turns out that the answer is no. Also, should Jason Statham ever have an annoying sidekick who isn't an attractive woman? The answer is also no.
However, the biggest question the film raises, and the one that doesn't have an answer is why they didn't just make a Transporter 4 or Crank 3. After all, both those franchises just had disappointing entries and The Mechanic doesn't offer anything new up. Maybe a full review of the film will flesh out an answer, but I doubt it. {{page_break}}
The Mechanic is about Jason Statham killing people and blowing things up. This is a very good plot for a movie as it has been repeated with great success on multiple occasions. If you're interested in the details of this rendition of the classic story then you should know that the film is about Arthur Bishop (Statham), a hitman known for his mechanical hits that leave no trace of them actually being hits. Bishop works for an organization partly controlled by Harry McKenna (Donal Sutherland), but must kill Harry when it turns out he has been stealing money. Wracked with guilt, Bishop finds Harry's wayward son Steve (Ben Foster) and the two become one of the worst assassination teams in history as Steve routinely screws up and the two kill a lot of people.
To the films detriment Arthur Bishop is not that interesting of a character and Statham seems incredibly disinterested in making him one. Not only is Statham's usual screen presence almost entirely lacking throughout the film, but the character of Bishop doesn't really have any unique qualities. He's supposed to be a mechanical killer, but once some terribly obvious exposition (at one point Sutherland actually utters the words "such a disappointment" about his character's son) in the opening of the movie establishes this fact there is very little actual proof that he is one. The proceeding assassinations both go horribly wrong and feel like they were planned by a five-year-old with a magic marker and some blue prints, not a professional killer known as a mechanic.
Aside from the lack of actual "mechnicalness" in a movie called The Mechanic, there's plenty more in the movie that puzzles. Bishop's adoption of Steve couldn't feel more forced or unreal, and the training montage that is supposed to turn him into a true mechanic makes you wonder even further if Bishop was a professional killer or just a guy who got really lucky when killing people. Foster does get to participate in the best part of the film, however. A fight scene between him and behemoth of a man is brutal, bloody and incredibly fun to watch. Sadly the intensity and creativity present in that one scene is almost completely lacking in the rest of the film, which either falls into tropes and cliches or fails at whatever it was trying to do.
Luckily for those who will eventually come across this movie while surfing their Netflix cue and decide to watch it, the film as a whole isn't entirely unbearable. It just simply sits far more than it should for being an action flick. The screenplay shows hints of originality that sit buried under tons of rewrites. There is actually a few really fantastic one-liners in the film, and often those can make even the dullest action movies worth watching at least once. And while I wouldn't go so far as to call The Mechanic truly dull, it's definitely missing what has made other Statham action vehicles stand out so well: creativity.
As for the answer to my previously presented question; I'm still not sure. Thanks to the ending it's pretty obvious that the filmmakers are perfectly fine with bringing Arthur Bishop back so creating a franchise might be the answer. But once you've seen the movie this answer only raises another question: Does anyone really want him back?
5.00 – Bad. (5s are movies that either failed at reaching the goals it set out to do, or didn’t set out to do anything special and still had many flaws. Some will enjoy 5s, but unless you’re a fan of this genre, you shouldn’t see it, and might not even want to rent it.)
