IF YOU’VE GOT A SPARE 90 MINS...

The Mechanic: Resurrection Running time: 1 hr 38 min Starring: Jason Statham, Jessica Alba,Tommy Lee Jones Director: Dennis Gansel

REMEMBERthe 1990s? Remember those halcyon days of non-stop disposable action movies? Hell, you couldn’t throw a s*** stick without it ricocheting off a high-kicking cinematic release from messrs Van-Damme, Seagal or Snipes. Sure, they were offerings that might be low on tact and subtlety, but what they lacked in depth they more than made up for with deaths and damage to property.

But, alas, those carefree days are now long since gone, and cinemagoers today ask for just so much more from their action heroes. Step forward actors like Jason Statham. Not merely a model and an accomplished martial artist, he also represented his country at the Commonwealth Games as a high-diver, and is also a talented soccer player.

Recently, he’s managed to rise above and beyond the action genre, playing straight roles in The Bank Job and Hummingbird, and also parodying his hard-guy image in a series of phone adverts, as well as that killer turn in Spy. But those appearances aren’t really where the money is, and alongside his recurring role in the Fast/Furious movies the Stath is now back on our screens in his other franchise, The Mechanic. So how does the second entry in the series measure up?

Well, it’s been five short years since we saw meticulous murderer Arthur Bishop fake his death and try to get out of the “Pay Money/Kill People” industry. The film opens with him inevitably being pulled right back in again, kicking off with a brutal fight scene in a Brazilian eatery that reminds viewers exactly why you shouldn’t screw with the Stath while he trying to have his supper.

What follows is textbook Statham, and shows just how much of a misstep it was to try and reboot the Transporter franchise without him. The movie sees him shooting, stabbing and slicing his way through a series of glamorous locations, including Brazil, Thailand, Australia and… er… Bulgaria.

There’s nothing particularly new or dynamic to be found here. Jessica Alba (remember her?) is wheeled in as a painfully twodimensional love interest, blackmailed into trying to trap Bishop in order to save some orphans from being offed by an equally two-dimensional token British bad guy. Yep. You heard me. Orphans. In an orphanage.

With Alba kidnapped and being held hostage, it falls to Bishop to carry out a trio of increasingly complex assassinations to win her back. The catch? They all need to look like accidents. It’s at this point that the film hits a comfortably reassuring vein, as the Stath gets down to what he does best via a Team America style montage . Progressing from an African prison to a Cold-War era submarine pen in Bulgaria, via a particularly troublesome hit on a swimming pool jutting out of the side of a Sydney luxury apartment, Statham calmly and coolly kills off a series of nasty arms dealers.

While the first movie had the venerable Donald Sutherland overseeing proceedings, he’s replaced here with a particularly bewildered looking Tommy Lee Jones, whose eyes seem to be nervously darting around the set for his pay cheque. While the preceding two thirds of the plot closely resemble a Bourne movie, all semblance of sanity is then dispatched in the film’s closing act, where it all becomes a horrible mish-mash of MacGyver and Hitman: Agent 47, as a whole host of disposable bad guys are brutally dispatched.

What sets Statham above his peers is his evident love for his craft, and the fight scenes benefit massively from his personal touch. The problem is, while he’s doing the heavy lifting, nobody else involved in the project seems to be, and once the “kill him and make it look like an accident” phase is out of the way, it all just gets a bit messy. If you’ve got a spare 90 minutes, or have a particular love of seeing henchmen murdered with firearms, fountain pens or soft furnishings, then this is worth your time. If not – I’d recommend you give it a miss. – Screengeek.net