Review of Mechanic: Resurrection (2016) by Chris M — 07 Sep 2016

The first Mechanic came out years ago, so Hollywood decided to remake the original back in 2011. Jason Statham as your leading man, action, violence, and a standard plot leave little room for anyone to ruin that formula.

The first came off reasonably well, however, Resurrection fumbles the hand off due to a restrictive plot, campy acting, far-fetched action scenes because of rushed writing and, pardon the pun, mechanical performances from its actors.

It's not all bad. It feels like Statham movies come far and few between lately, but they all seem to land in a B-range action ranking. For Resurrection, not because it's necessarily his fault, it feels sloppy and tired.

The first film had him bouncing his abilities off Ben Foster, even though that film was overtly violent and silly as compared to the original. With Resurrection, he doesn't have the benefit of redirecting some of the nuances onto another actor.

Instead, we see the plot for what it is. The added love angle with Jessica Alba is nonsense. Let this man cheat death and kill people without the hindrance of being tied down to someone else other than himself and his own well being.

Alba offered zero acting credit to this role, and I'm surprised she came out of the woodwork for it. A fine actress and a stunning one to boot, but her character here was pointless. So if we strip away the shoddy directing and unbelievable jump cuts from one thing to another that leave the audience wondering how in the world our characters actually did anything, the fight scenes combined with the set pieces are fun.

Overall, Statham may sucker some people (like me) into checking out the second (and hopefully last) movie of this short Mechanic group. While not a total waste, quite frankly, there are other hitman-esq films out there that give you a better connection to both it's hero and villain than a regurgitated, K-mart special combination of James Bond or Jason Bourne.