A Working Man Trailer is Pure Action Wish Fulfillment
Jason Statham is getting his Taken. The action star has a new movie on the way, and today, Amazon MGM Studios released a trailer for his next badass flick, A Working Man. Based on the novel Levon’s Trade by Chuck Dixon (the comic book writer who co-created Batman villain Bane at DC, had a celebrated Punisher run at Marvel, and is currently working for the Rippaverse), A Working Man casts Statham as Levon Cade, a former British Special Forces commando (a backstory that I guess helps explain why he can do what he does, but I’m always willing to accept the reasoning that he’s Jason Statham) who now works for a construction company but must go back into action to save his boss’ daughter when she’s kidnapped by sex traffickers. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that massively satisfying violence ensues. Michael Peña, Noemi Gonzalez, Arianna Rivas, Jason Flemyng, Eve Mauro, Maximilian Osinski, and David Harbour also star with Statham. Directed by David Ayer from a script by Sylvester Stallone (hell yes!), A Working Man will arrive in theaters and leave no evildoers alive on March 20, 2025, and you can see the trailer below:
It’s safe to say this is my most anticipated movie forever, even if there’s a fire. I love action movies, and I really love Jason Statham; I consider him easily the best action star since the heyday of Arnold, Stallone, Bruce Willis, Van Damme, and Seagal. And A Working Man has a lot going for it. David Ayer is a capable action director (check out Ayer’s Street Kings, a criminally forgotten cop thriller with a terrific and, at the time, unexpected leading performance from Keanu Reeves) who last worked with Statham on The Beekeeper, which I enjoyed but thought could have been written a bit better. On that score, we’ve got a script from Sylvester Stallone, who wrote one of Statham’s best movies, Homefront. That film was written specifically for Statham, which indicates that Stallone knows how to play to Statham’s strengths, and the trailer reinforces that. It’s full of Statham showing off his martial arts, beating bad guys into chopped meat, and setting out to rescue a kidnapped girl as a matter of honor to help the people who helped him. One of my favorite things about Statham’s persona (and there absolutely is a Jason Statham persona that he likes to play with in many of his films) is his proud masculinity, and his movies often examine that. This one looks like it’s more about what a man does for his friends, and considering the subject matter, it could go beyond that, especially considering his former life as a soldier.
First poster for the Levon Cade movie. pic.twitter.com/2rgP9rzuOJ
— Chuck Dixon (@Dixonverse) January 9, 2025
On that score, A Working Man is particularly timely considering the prevalence of figures like Jeffrey Epstein and Sean “Puff Daddy/P.Diddy/Who Cares Because He’s A Scumbag” Combs in the national consciousness. (And it’s not just America; look what’s been going on in the UK with grooming gangs.) These vile people exist, and the depressing reality is that they usually go unpunished, so it’s cathartic to see a movie where Jason Statham finds them and annihilates them. That was what made Taken such a fun and satisfying movie, as well as things like 24, which capitalized on post-9/11 fears by giving us a hero who would deal terror back to the terrorists, or Red Dawn, which put Americans at the mercy of the world’s communists during the Cold War and had a bunch of patriotic kids fight back and kick their asses. I don’t know if Epstein and Diddy’s clients and conspirators will ever see justice in real life, but I know Jason Statham will pay them back on the screen. People scoff at this kind of film, but sometimes, we need the catharsis of wish fulfillment. That’s why superhero movies were so popular when they played to that theme (one of my favorite moments in The Avengers is when all these people are blaming the Avengers for the destruction in New York, and then the waitress looks into the camera and says, simply, “Captain America saved my life”), and why they dropped off so badly when they decided to focus on other things. So, I’m all set for A Working Man (although I wish it retained the book’s title because it’s cooler), and I’m glad it doesn’t look like Jason Statham is changing his spots anytime soon.
Let us know what you thought of the A Working Man trailer in the comments!
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