Blu-ray Review :: A Working Man in 4K

MGM Studios

Levon Cade left behind a decorated military career in the black ops to live a simple life working construction. But when his boss’s daughter, who is like family to him, is taken by human traffickers, his search to bring her home uncovers a world of corruption far greater than he ever could have imagined.

REVIEW

A Working Man is the latest in the line of Jason Statham ‘getting bloody revenge for an innocent person’ movies he’s done, although this one is not nearly as silly or fun as The Beekeeper. Here the movie comes from director David Ayer and is co-written by him and Sylvester Stallone, a certainly interesting combination — it’s adapted from a book (yes it’s a book) from old school comic book writer Chuck Dixon called Levon’s Trade, the first in a series of ‘Levon Cade’ thrillers. Ayer essentially writes all of his movies, and Stallone’s writing … well let’s just say it’s been inconsistent over the years (although it’s rare for him to write a movie he’s not in).

Statham stars as Levon Cade, which to be fair is a pretty classic Statham movie name, a classic American construction foreman (albeit also a former Royal Marine, he makes no pains to hide his accent after all), working for a family business of immigrants — the Garcias, whom he is close with, and especially the daughter Jenny (Arianna Rivas) who is a surrogate daughter after Cade was divorced from his ex-wife and gets minimal time with his actual daughter.

After Jenny is kidnapped by traffickers working for Russian mobster Dimi (Maximilian Osinski), Cade has to reject payment from the Garcias to track down the missing girl — although he immediately changes his mind after talking with his old blind buddy Gunny (David Harbour, always a fun time). Thus we now get Statham as Cade beating up people and killing all those in his path, making many enemies along the way as he tracks down Jenny.

These action scenes are pretty fun, which is no real surprise, as Ayer has always been pretty good at that sort of thing, and Statham is also fun in his ‘SuperStatham’ role where he is essentially invincible and recovers from any physical problem easily. All that is pretty fun, and it’s what you expect — no depth, no complicated moral questions, just a bunch of bad dudes of varying degrees of awfulness. Some gangsters might be aghast at trafficking while they are perfectly fine peddling drugs or murdering innocent bystanders, you know, the usual.

The movie is a little bloated at nearly two hours long, with a few extended bits that could be shored up, and I wonder which parts of the script are directly lifted from the book and which are Ayer’s dark humor or Stallone’s sentimental violence. David Harbour is of course delightful, even playing this ludicrous magic blind veteran character, and Arianna Rivas does the job to make her victim character a bit more interesting than as written.

Naturally Statham is at his best when he’s destroying things in his past, but there are one or two conversation scenes that he has to think about solutions that showcase that he’s more than a blank pair of fists — not enough to leverage his comedic skills like Spy did, but I’m always glad to see it done.

MGM Studios

VIDEO

The 4K disc is a good quality transfer, showing the action scenes cleanly and easy to follow — it’s helped by Statham’s experience in the matter too. The predominantly dark image is handled well, and the HDR10 encoding bolsters colors and prevents harsh lighting from blowing out against dark backgrounds. Oddly, neither the disk nor the digital version includes Dolby Vision as the theatrical presentation did.

AUDIO

While there is no Dolby Vision, the audio track is presented in Dolby Atmos which, as expected, will put your surround system to work with an active sound field and an impressive use of the subwoofer for gunshots, explosions and heavy thuds.

SPECIAL FEATURES

The disk contains absolutely no special features, not even a trailer, though a Digital Code is included.

OVERVIEW

Don’t expect anything amazing here, but it’s also not nearly as treacly or regressive as you might be worried about. It’s a fun time, and it’s always satisfying to see Statham brutalize some villains, and the 4K presentation is decent enough, almost giving you the full theatrical experience.

Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment generously provided Hotchka with the 4K disk for reviewing purposes.

A Working Man has a running time of 1 hour 56 minutes, and is rated R for strong violence, language throughout, and drug content.

A Working Man – Official Trailer