Considering the number of underworld smoothies who get the job done Jason Statham has already played, the relatively muted tone and moral murkiness of The Mechanic probably appealed to him. Who knows, maybe he wants to get out of the “shooting people and driving vehicles steely-eyed” genre, or at least stretch its parameters. But if the film is going to end like all the others, with our beautiful baldy sitting pretty and everyone else dead (whether or not they had it coming), then there’s no reason we can’t fill the movie with more “Aw yeah, you’ve just been Mechanic-ed!” moments (thankfully, there are still a few). That Ben Foster doesn’t go full Alpha Dog as Statham’s troubled apprentice is a similarly misguided, though not ruinous, attempt at respectability.
