Let’s be honest: whenever a new Jason Statham movie arrives, the story and the acting are secondary as long as the action delivers.
In Mechanic: Resurrection, retired contract killer Arthur Bishop is living quietly in the underbelly of Brazil. Bishop specializes in making his assassinations look like accidents while maintaining his reputation as a ghost. An old enemy surfaces and blackmails him into carrying out three “impossible” contract kills: an African warlord, a shady Australian businessman, and a target played by Tommy Lee Jones who looks like he’s cosplaying as Ringo Starr. Bishop must complete all three jobs on a tight deadline while also trying to protect a woman he met roughly 48 hours earlier, played by Jessica Alba.
The first question most people will ask is whether they need to watch the 2011 Mechanic to understand this sequel. The answer is no. In fact, it feels as if almost no one involved in making this movie bothered to revisit the first one either, so don’t waste your time.
Look, all I really wanted was 90 minutes of bone-crushing action. Was that too much to ask? For a brief moment in the opening it seemed like that was exactly what we were going to get. Bishop is cornered by a group of hitmen at a café in Rio. They deliver the classic “do this or else” threat. Within minutes he has turned their faces into hamburger meat, then escapes by leaping an absurd distance onto a paraglider and sailing away to safety. If the movie had ended right there, it would have earned a perfect score. Unfortunately, the film then decides it needs to make us care about the characters and spends the next half-hour on setup and “story.” Jessica Alba plays Gina, a textbook humanitarian who works with poor children in developing countries and fights human trafficking.
The character is clearly planted to manipulate Bishop, and he sees through the ruse almost immediately. Somehow they still end up falling for each other, which only raises the question of what the point of the deception was in the first place. The plot is thin and exists solely to connect the action set pieces. The bigger problem is that there simply isn’t enough action. By the 35-minute mark I was already checking my watch, wondering when the face-punching was going to resume. The film had a $40 million budget, yet many of the special effects look noticeably cheaper. Some of the digital work is so poor it wouldn’t have felt out of place in a Sharknado movie.
During ordinary dialogue scenes the camera frequently jump-cuts and bounces around for no apparent reason, turning simple conversations between Bishop and Gina into visually restless exercises. For reasons known only to the production, nearly every villain seems to own the exact same red smartphone, as if a bulk order of crimson Motorolas had flooded the black market.
The single best sequence in the film is an elaborate high-rise pool sabotage that Bishop uses to eliminate one of his targets. It is clever, well-staged, and satisfying. Almost everything else is forgettable and painfully formulaic. Michelle Yeoh is the only cast member who appears to be making a genuine effort. Tommy Lee Jones is on screen for roughly five minutes and looks completely ridiculous in the process.
Mechanic: Resurrection plays like a glorified 1980s B-movie that somehow lost the cheese and campiness that would have made that style enjoyable. It has Jason Statham doing what Jason Statham does, but it surrounds him with too much dead air, too little credible action, and a plot that never rises above the purely functional. When the highlights are an early café brawl and one creative kill, you know the rest of the movie has come up short.
1/5
Society Reviews 
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