Mechanic: Resurrection (2016) – Review

Even a hitman can hit the target but spectacularly miss the point, I guess.
Basically, in 2011, Jason Statham appeared in The Mechanic, a typically “Stathed up” remake of an oddly thoughtful Michael Winner thriller that came out back in the 70s. The original movie saw Charles Bronson as a seriously depressed hitman attempt to overcome his midlife crisis by taking the psychotic son of one of his victims on as a protégé to teach him the ropes and finer points of murdering people and making look like an accident. However, while the Statham version was slicker, it also changed the downbeat ending – which essentially saw everyone end up dead – just give our slaphead lead a cool walk-away-from-the-fireball shot.
However, if letting Statham’s Arthur Bishop survive essentially eradicated the entire point of the original film, then giving him a thoroughly unnecessary sequel five years later was the equivalent of digging it up and pooping into its open mouth. Hey, I know it’s a vivid image, but I’ve got a point to make, y’know?

After faking his own death, Bishop has been laying low by living an idyllic life in Rio de Janeiro, listening to records abd chilling on his boat under an assumed name. However, because that name is Santos for some fucking reason, he’s ultimately tracked down by a gang of slick mercs who denand that he work for their employer and assassinate three targets scattered all across the world by making them looking freak accidents. Bishop promptly refuses and beats them all up, but after fleeing to Thailand, he discovers that the man who wishes to employ him is none other than Riah Crain, a particularly nasty face from his troubled past.
Not long after, he rescues a woman being beaten by her boyfriend only to discover he’s wandered into something of a clumsy honey trap as the woman in question, Gina Thornton, has been maneuvered into Bishop’s life by Crain to fall in love with him, thereby providing the villain with the necessary leverage to get the hitman to do his bidding.
However, after the two manage to figure this out, they then choose to immediately *checks notes* fall in love? Wait, that can’t be right, can it? Actually, it can, because it’s one of those kind of films, and before you can say “called it!”, Crain’s goons whisk Gina away and Bishop ends up having to do the three hits anyway.
The first hit requires Bishop in infiltrate a Malaysian prison to scratch out a warlord, the second will see him try and target a former sex trafficker located in his skyrise fortress in Sydney and the third is to try and rub out an American arms dealer hiding out in Bulgaria and all three will require our hero to utilise his talents to the fullest. But even if he succeeds in his world tour of murder, how can Bishop free his love if she’s on a boat in the middle of the ocean?

Just quite how we went from a brooding 70s, Charles Bronson thriller about masculine depression and the need for human interaction to a braindead, modern actioner where the Stath escapes a gang of heavies in the first fifteen minutes by leaping off a cable car onto a passing hang glider, I’m not too sure, but Mechanic: Resurrection seems to have no real desire to follow in the tonal footsteps of the original or even the remake that it’s following. I’m not going to say that the previous film, helmed by Con Air’s Simon West, was an accurate reproduction of Winner’s gritty thriller, but least it tried to keep things vaguely in line with the plot even if it ironed out some of the more challenging themes – however, in Dennis (The Wave) Gansel’s follow up, any sense of actual drama or grit is swept aside to give us a far more typical action flick that feels more like a slick entry in one of the Staths other franchises.
However, not even a entry in the Transporter series managed to snag a cast like this and with the likes of Jessica Alba, Michelle Yeoh and Tommy Lee Jones all filling out the cast sheet, I acrually found myself thinking that this sequel could actually be something special.
More fool me then, because this movie features so many actors phoning in their performances, most of the budget must have gone towards ensuring that the production had flawless 4G. Jessica Alba seems to think that she’s scored a role in another Into The Blue sequel because when she isn’t providing a hint of chemistry with Statham, she’s indulging in the exactly the same kind of underwater butt and bikini shots she engaged in eleven years earlier.

In fact, some of her dialogue with her co-star is so bad, it proves to be more bruising than some of the action. At one point she fixes the Stath with those big, watery eyes and dramatically utters “Those kids are everything to me. If they get trafficked or… or killed… I couldn’t bear it.” with all the passion of a child in a school play, however, Statham counters with an equally awkard “I understand. I was an orphan too.” that just made we want to join in by yelling “OH FUCK OFF!” at the screen. Elsewhere, the movie utterly wastes Yeoh in a role that seems to think that putting the legendary actress in a non-action role in an action movie is the smart way to go. While we’ve seen her keep up with Jackie Chan in his prime and soar through the air in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Mechanic: Resurrection instead casts her as a resort owner who has to call Bishop in to aid a beaten woman when we all know she could capably handle the abusive prick on her own. Finally, if Statham is acting like he’s in a Transporter film, Alba is behaving like she’s on the set of Into The Blue 3: Electric Blue-galoo and Yeoh is barely acting at all, Tommy Lee Jones seems to be trying to relive his Under Seige days, performing his shades wearing, Cubo-futurist totalitarian art loving, weapons dealer like he’s having a mid-life crisis and is using a shit film to disguise it.
With a bunch of actors collecting checks and a plot that’s virtually non existent, it’s down to the action to try and salvage the day, but while the Mechanic’s second (or technically third) coming includes some typically hard hitting (if brutally cartoonish) fist fights and a few elaborately staged hits (the swimming pool sequence is, admittedly, a banger), it isn’t enough to avoid making the whole experience a waste of time.

Seemingly essentially tailor made for anyone who’s primary kink is seeing Jason Statham wearing an endless array of wetsuits (there’s even a scene that harkens back to his Olympic diving days), Mechanic: Resurrection simply can’t bring itself back to life no matter how many thugs Statham smashes in the face.
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