Thursday, June 30, 2011

Mechanical

Nothing like a good Jason Statham movie. The Mechanic is close enough.

Statham is, as usual, a meticulously expert criminal, an assassin this time, although possibly working for the government. He has a cozy hideout on the bayou in Louisiana, possibly near John Malkovich's place from Red. His only friend is elderly Donald Sutherland, retired spook and professor. But his boss convinces him that Sutherland has gone bad and needs to be killed, so Statham reluctantly does him in.

But when he finds out that Sutherland's ne'er-do-well son Ben Foster is taking the death hard, Statham takes him under his wing and trains him to be a covert killer.

Now, this doesn't make much sense, but neither does much else in this movie. There are enough gunfights, fistfights and explosions to keep you interested, but don't think too much. The biggest problem, in my opinion, is that Ben Foster is total jerk, and Statham is too uptight to be likable. A little charm or humor would have been appreciated. Sutherland might have been good for that - he also looked cool with the big beard - but he gets killed early on.

Also, either the sound was poor or everybody mumbled all the time. That's normal for Statham, but I didn't get most of the dialog. Fortunately, that is not what this movie is about.

In conclusion, this is a remake of a Charles Bronson movie. Which is in the queue.

1 comment:

mr. schprock said...

"Also, either the sound was poor or everybody mumbled all the time. That's normal for Statham, but I didn't get most of the dialog."

I use "subtitles for the hearing-impaired" a lot. You don't miss anything that way, especially "creaking sound" and "explosion."