Action movies are a dime a dozen, and I'm hardly impressed by most of them these days. Some decent ass-kicking just doesn't get the job done for me anymore. We've all seen a million movies about lonely cops, corrupt spies, or betrayed assassins. We need something fresh and innovative to add a new page to the action movie playbook. We need to make ass-kicking awesome again. Unfortunately, Jason Statham's The Mechanic isn't the movie to do it.
Arthur Bishop (Statham) is a "mechanic" who can fix many types of problems. The question is whether this skilled assassin wants to fix them. When tasked by his employer to take out his long-time mentor Harry McKenna (Donald Sutherland), Bishop demands a meeting to find out why his friend needs to be put down. Dean Sanderson (Tony Goldwyn) meets Bishop and informs him that McKenna betrayed the company in a mission gone awry in South Africa. Bishop then accepts the assignment and kills his friend and mentor McKenna. At the funeral, Bishop meets McKenna's son Steve (Ben Foster) and takes him under his wing. Recognizing his potential, Bishop trains Steve to become a fellow mechanic while trying to maintain the secret that he killed Steve's father.
The Mechanic is one of those forgettable movies about which you just won't give a damn. While Jason Statham and Ben Foster deliver all the ass-kicking an action junkie could want, there's nothing special about the movie. When I finished watching the film, there was nothing that left me thinking that I had just seen a great action flick. There was nothing that left me wanting more.
I could certainly pick The Mechanic apart because it's got plenty of flaws. However, I'm only going to focus on one issue — the lack of character development. The three main characters are poorly developed altogether. Bishop should be a much more conflicted man. He killed his mentor Harry and is training his son Steve. What little heart he has left should be hurting. Steve is a character who doesn't quite live up to his potential. He finds out that Bishop killed his father and consequently shows no change in demeanor. This is a guy who beats a carjacker's ass while grieving. Learning his mentor killed his father should have put him in a fury. Finally, we have Dean Sanderson. This waste of space was the most underdeveloped character. This villain has no substance and adds no real value to the film whatsoever. The core of the film is the interaction between Bishop and Steve, and director Simon West should have left it that way. There’s no need for Sanderson at all.
All in all, The Mechanic is a formulaic action flick that doesn't do anything for me, so I did myself a favor while watching this one. I fixed a couple of gin and tonics to help me get through the movie. The Mechanic gets a 0.09% rating.
