Anyone planning to see this rather unnecessary remake of the old Michael Winner/Charles Bronson flick from 1972 should do them selves a favour and skip it altogether.
Anyone planning to see this rather unnecessary remake of the old Michael Winner/Charles Bronson flick from 1972 should do them selves a favour and skip it altogether. Go and hire the original instead! Not that The Mechanic was a great movie in itself, but it seems like a masterpiece compared to this noisy, fast and furious, gratuitously violent, and ultimately pointless remake.
The role of Arthur Bishop was tailor made for the weathered, craggy faced, taciturn Bronson, who gave one of his more subtle performances as the cold-blooded killer who was ultimately betrayed by his mysterious employer. The role has been re-jigged to suit the bombastic testosterone driven style of macho action hero Jason Statham, who lacks any sort of subtlety.
Bishop has just killed his mentor Harry McKenna (Donald Sutherland, wasted in a brief appearance) on the orders of his boss (Tony Goldwyn, aiming for sinister but coming across as merely smug). Bishop takes on McKenna’s estranged son Steve (Ben Foster, recently seen in The Messenger, etc) as an apprentice, teaching him some of the tricks of the killing trade. Steve is keen to avenge his father’s death, but is thankfully unaware of Bishop’s role in his father’s death. While he proves to be a keen student, he is also something of a loose cannon, impetuous, and a mercurial hot head with substance abuse problems.
But the odd couple relationship here fails to fire and there seems to be little chemistry between the cool and humourless Statham and the brooding, twitchy Foster. There was much more tension in the relationship between Bronson and his protégé, played by then rising young star Jan Michael Vincent.
Director Simon West has proved a dab hand at this sort of high-octane action film in the past, with the superb Con Air, etc, to his credit. Here his direction is brisk and muscular, all flashy edits and an energetic visual style that can’t completely disguise the rather thin plot.
Writer Richard Wenk has reworked Lewis John Carlino’s original script and refashioned it into a cliched, out and out action film aimed purely at today’s generation raised on ultra-violent and kinetically paced video games. While Wenk’s script adheres to the original’s template, he has tacked on some car chases, some spectacular stunts involving leaping from skyscrapers, lots of nasty-edged violence, and a veritable mountain of bodies piled up.
But the whole thing is vaguely disappointing! And, unlike the original’s down beat ending, this remake leaves the way open for a sequel and a possible new action franchise for Statham.
