Mechanic: Resurrection

Mechanic: Resurrection is the kind of low-energy thriller that a big action star like Jason Statham should be avoiding at this point of his career.  He's done better, and likely will do better after this.  This time he completely strikes out with a film that barely seems interested in itself.

The film is a follow up to 2011's The Mechanic, and while I do remember seeing the movie, I couldn't for the life of me tell you what it was about, or what happened in it.  That's not really a problem however, as you don't need previous knowledge to see this.  Statham plays Arthur Bishop, a former assassin for hire who faked his death, and now divides his time living a peaceful life between Rio and Thailand.  His past catches up with him when a former enemy named Crain (Sam Hazeldine) tracks him down.  Crain wants Arthur to kill three targets for him, and sends some thugs along to try to force him into doing the job.  When that doesn't work, Crain takes the new woman in Arthur's life, Gina (Jessica Alba), hostage.  Arthur must now take out all three targets in order to keep Gina alive, with the only condition being that the deaths must look like an accident.  This leads to situations where Arthur must pose as a prisoner in a Malaysian prison to get at one of his targets, or another where he has to stage an accident in a highrise penthouse in Sydney, Australia.

There's not really much more to the movie than what I have described above.  Mechanic: Resurrection is just as unimaginative as its title, and offers as little as possible for the audience, while still having something to display on the screen.  The hero is all grit and no personality, his love interest is a helpless screaming victim who exists solely to be held hostage, the villains are stock, and the action is standard.  The only person in this movie who is able to inject any kind of life is Tommy Lee Jones, who shows up in the third act as a billionaire arms dealer intended to be the third and final target that Crain wants taken out.  Jones seems to know what kind of movie he's in, and doesn't take it all that seriously.  The movie as a whole could have used more of his attitude.  Instead, it takes itself completely at face value, and pretends we're actually supposed to care about all this.

Again, I find myself asking a question I have found myself asking lately at the movies over this summer - Why did this need to be made?  The original movie did not exactly win anyone over at the box office, so I assume it did better than expected on DVD.  Still, why make a sequel to this, and why make one that required absolutely no thought or skill in the creative process?  This is a bankrupt enterprise, where everyone from the screenwriters to the producers to the actors were paid for giving a minimal effort.  Is this really the best they could have done?  Did the writers go home satisfied every night after a long day of plugging these cardboard characters into one forgettable situation after another, without giving them a single thought, or giving them anything interesting to do or say?  Was this really supposed to please what fans the first movie did have?

I don't know, and I will never know.  The movie is already fading from my mind less than an hour after my screening got out, and I'm sure with time Mechanic: Resurrection will be forgotten by me, just as the last one was.  It can't happen soon enough.

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