A Working Man: You're never going to believe this gang, but the new Jason Statham movie is exactly what you would expect it to be like. A Working Man sees the Stath-man reuniting with David Ayer just under 15 months after the release of their previous collaboration The Beekeeper for yet another Amazon-backed piece of gleeful B-action idiocy. This time around Statham plays a widowed construction worker who's forced to return to the violent life he left behind when he retired from the Royal Marines and moved to Chicago after his bosses' (Michael Pena, Naomi Gonzalez) 19-year-old daughter (Arianna Rivas) is kidnapped by human traffickers that are tied to the Russian mob. There have been plenty of riffs on Taken since that film became a global phenomenon 16 years ago, but A Working Man is the first to feature the hero threatening a pair of meth dealers by menacingly pouring syrup over a stack of waffles, David Harbour as a blind retired commando with a secluded country home full of customized firearms that can't be traced back to him and cartoonish villains that wear flamboyant outfits and hang out in the most garishly lit spaces the human mind could possibly conceive. Stupid ingenuity is what has made the burgeoning creative partnership between Statham and Ayer work so well and these eccentric details go a long way in helping to atone for the choppy fight scenes and less tongue-in-cheek tone that contribute to this film being a bit less fun than The Beekeeper. May these gents continue to make pure-hearted B-action flicks for as long as Statham can still handle the physical toll of being an ass-kicking machine.
Grade: B
Death of a Unicorn: Death of a Unicorn marks the feature debut for writer/director Alex Scharfman and for better or worse, it's evident throughout. There's several different movies competing for breathing room here ("eat the rich" satire, blunt commentary on mankind's desire to disrupt/destroy the natural world for their own benefit, earnest father/daughter story, a creature-driven splatter comedy) and it leads to some pacing issues (particularly in the first half) and a whole lot of ideas that are varying degrees of underdeveloped. Scharfman's lack of focus brought on by his greeness ultimately gets bailed out by a game ensemble cast (Paul Rudd, Jenna Ortega, Tea Leoni, Richard E. Grant, Anthony Carrigan, Sunita Mani, Jessica Hynes, Will Poulter-who is the runaway MVP with his impeccable line deliveries) who do a good job of playing up the deadpan comedy that emerges out of this absurd premise and some tense setpieces and satisfyingly gnarly kills that occur when the unicorns extract their revenge on the greedy humans in the second half of the film. Despite Death of a Unicorn's pervasive shagginess, Scharfman does enough good things here to make me cautiously optimistic that there are better days ahead in his filmmaking career.
Grade: B-
The Woman in the Yard: I was onboard with The Woman in the Yard for most of its running time. There's a foreboding atmosphere present in nearly every frame as a grief-stricken family (Danielle Deadwyler, Peyton Jackson, Estella Kahiha) confronts the looming threat of a mysterious veiled woman (Okwui Okpokwasili) sitting outside their home who appears to be getting closer with each passing hour, many of the film's technical elements (cinematography, sound design, camerawork, score) are pretty great and underrated veteran director Jaume Collet-Serra (Carry-On, Non-Stop) once again dips into his slick back of directorial choices to create some solid setpieces that make clever use of its isolated farmhouse setting. Then, the final 20 minutes happened and a lot of that good will went out the window. Admittedly, Collett-Serra and writer Sam Stefanak are taking a big swing with the final act. As commendable as their ambition is, the execution couldn't have been clumsier. The final scenes seem to be crafted with the hope that the viewer will be eager to debate what was actually happening on screen, but all of the material that's intended to be open to interpretation is delivered so rapidly that it becomes more disorienting, and obnoxious than endearingly ambiguous. Between this and Wolf Man, Blumhouse has been in the business of making frustrating movies that fall short of their potential to kick off 2025. Hopefully, next week's Drop can put a stop to this unfortunate run before it snowballs into a full-blown trend.
Grade: C
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