Movie: Mechanic: Resurrection
Director: Dennis Gansel
Cast: Jason Statham, Jessica Alba, Tommy Lee Jones
Rating: 1.5/5
If it weren't for the odd mobile phone and some snazzy touchscreen computers, it would be very easy to mistake The Mechanic: Resurrection for an 80's action movie. The Commando kind. Where pretty much everything else is a footnote and the only things that really matter are the larger-than-life, guns blazing, extra-macho action scenes. Stallone loved them. Schwarzenegger made it all the way to the Governor's house on them. And now, Statham is trying to resurrect them along with his sagging box office returns.
A lot of the hand-to-hand combat, and there is a LOT, could have been enjoyable, if it wasn't so repetitive and involved such a high body count. Between the shooting, the hitting and the grenade throwing, I lost count of the number of people Statham killed at 54. And that was somewhere around the one-hour mark, mind you. You've got to give it to Jason Statham for effort, though. He must have spent hours shooting all those action scenes.
If you remove the seven odd fight/murder/action sequences in the 99-minute film, there's very little left — save for Jessica Alba, who may just have made a pile off the product placements (bikinis and summer wear for the most part), placed on her.
Statham reprises the role of Arthur 'The Mechanic' Bishop, a hitman in hiding, until Jessica Alba is honeypot-ted to lure him out of retirement by arms dealer Riah Crain (Sam Hazeldine). Once he learns that she spends her time rehabilitating Cambodian kids and Crain's threatening to kill them, they're on the fast-track to being soulmates.
If you can't guess what happens next, you either grew up in the late 90's or you've never watched Schwarzenegger reruns on Star Movies. Villain grabs girl, sets Statham three high-profile targets to kill and delivers evil laugh. Actually, I don't quite remember the laugh, but let's assume he does it anyway.
Right about then, the plot really goes haywire. I'll admit that I enjoy watching a well-planned cinematic assassination as much as the next man. But the much-hyped kills are so simple, sloppy and pedestrian, it's a wonder Crain went to all that trouble to get Statham to do them.
There's this one sequence where Statham climbs up hundreds of floors to kill an arms dealer whose penthouse swimming pool half-extends outside the roof and teeters over the Sydney skyline like a blue diving board over a concrete jungle. I get that it's supposed to get your adrenaline pumping as much as when Tom Cruise was scaling the walls of the Burj Al-Khalifa in Mission:Impossible 4. But in reality, Statham clambers up as easily as he's on a treadmill with a mild incline. Talk about wasted airtime.
PS: Tommy Lee Jones does a short cameo as a redneck arms dealer who rides a submarine in Bulgaria. He looks awful in leopardskin and the two ear studs don't do him any favours.
Verdict: If you can cheer when Jason Statham goes about offing hundreds of gun-toting baddies and switch off the rest of the time, then give it a shot.
