The Mechanic: Resurrection (2016)

(On Cable TV, April 2019) Despite liking Jason Statham quite a bit, I have no regrets whatsoever in watching The Mechanic: Resurrection three years after its release, so average and undistinguished is the result. If you were to rank all Statham films, this sequel would probably be at the exact median—nothing special, but without the pretentious existential musings of its prequel, and with a few decent action set-pieces. This sequel dispenses with the more ambitious fluff of the original film to focus on another retired-hitman-brought-back-to-the-business plot with few bells and whistles. The schematic plot is built around three globetrotting set-pieces, with director Dennis Gansel doing his best to make each segment visually distinctive. He doesn’t do particularly well on the rest: the action is intelligible without being spectacular most of the time, a result of a frenetic editing style that doesn’t give a lot of room for the action to breathe. Statham is up to his usual standards, while Tommy Lee Jones looks like he’s having a tiny amount of perceptible fun playing an arms dealer. I have mixed feeling about Jessica Alba and Michelle Yeoh as supporting characters: on one hand, yay, on the other they don’t have much to do except being kidnapped. The vague videogame-like plot is all about providing Statham with a chance to do his usual tough-guy thing, and arranging action set pieces in increasing levels of difficulty. (The best remains the mid-film pool sequence, so clearly contrived it becomes funny … but with the panache necessary to be remembered long after the rest of the film has quickly faded away.)  Fortunately, only arm dealers and their henchmen are killed along the way. Even in its schematic mediocrity, I prefer The Mechanic: Resurrection to its nearly unrelated prequel (or New Hollywood-era original): it’s less dour, more colourful and features Statham in good form. He’s capable of much better, but he has also starred in worse movies so it all evens out to a median-tier film, largely for his fans.