The Mechanic

It seems every movie I see lately is called "The (noun)." The Mechanic, The Green Hornet ... Maybe in the future, I'll wind up going all meta and see "The Movie."

Anyway, Evan and I went to see The Mechanic. I have three letters for it, and they are M, E and H, in that specific order. The movie didn't do anything for me, nor was it a complete waste of time.

It started off badly, because we were a bit late. I don't know how many previews we missed, but we walked in on the tail end of Battlefield LA, and saw Drive Angry, The Eagle (there it is again) and another one that I forget, but we both decided would not be on our list. (Turns out it was Limitless, a movie with far too much acting for our taste.)

Then the movie started, and Jason Statham (playing a guy called Arthur) killed a guy by waiting at the bottom of his pool and drowning him. Nifty concept, but not much action. Just some thrashing around by the drowning guy. Then Arthur snuck/walked out while the guards administered CPR. It didn't work. Arthur returned home and put on a classical record, of which we only hear the first minute of. Yes, our hitman ("mechanic") is cultured, because he listens to classical music. Or, one song of it, which gets played a few times. Seriously, don't you have anything else? Some Brahms, Mozart, Beethoven maybe? No, just that one song. Blah. And the rest of the soundtrack was nothing special either. So that was a bit of a disappointment for me.

Anyway, his mentor gets killed, so he takes the mentor's son Steve (played excellently by Ben Foster) under his wing and teaches him how to kill people. Steve learns quickly, and takes to killing. Which is a shame, because I don't think movies and TV shows to a very good job of portraying the psychological burden of having taken a life. Really, only Human Target's touched on it. The hero is an ex-hitman, so he's used to it, but he doesn't want other people to kill. To paraphrase, it's like a line that you can't uncross, and it's a heavy weight to carry for the rest of your life. Every other TV show and movie treats first-time killers like their fine afterwards, and it's business as usual. Yeah, right.

Anyway, Steve disregards Arthur's advice and gets into a brawl with the big gay guy he's supposed to have drugged. It gets uncomfortable and then bloody. Not that I have a problem with that, but I’d rather see stylized violence than a clumsy stabbing match.

Next, they hit a TV preacher who's a stereotypical TV preacher. Love, God, the Spirit's work, and behind the scenes it's drugs and abortions. Whee. I’m surprised they made the girl he hit on 18. I guess having him be a pedophile as well may have been a bit too expected. The hit goes wrong, they kill the preacher, and have a shootout with his escort. Wait, why does the preacher have goons, and why do they have guns? I have no idea, except to provide excitement for the audience. The pair flee by jumping off the roof of a high-rise hotel, something I always approve of.

They split up to take the heat off, and Arthur has a fight with a man who's supposed to be dead. That this guy is alive means that his employer betrayed him. So he kills the man by knocking him out of a bus, where he's promptly smoked by a passing car. Evan winced. I pumped my fist in awesomeness.

Each gets ambushed separately, but that's resolved very quickly. They fake a torture scene (one of these days, I want to see a movie subvert that and actually have the good guys torture someone, instead of faking it. It would make me question whether I wanted the good guy to win. No director has the balls to actually do that, or it may be that the studios keep putting the kibosh on it) and get information about where their employers actually are. And then there’s a very quick climax (insert your own dirty joke here) and a disappointing denouement, despite two exploding vehicles. There's a tremendous amount of preparation that could have been outsmarted by a bullet to the brain, but neither of the main characters thinks of it.

So this movie isn't a great movie. Not even a good one, really. It's okay. There are about four action scenes, only one of which lasts five minutes. Also, they had to have a carjacker in the movie. He's black. He's the only overtly black guy in the movie. Just something to think about, if you've been thinking about racism lately.

It's a low-budget rental. DVD old-release, or whatever. Yes, Ben Foster is good in it. There's some good action, but I've seen most of it before (although I haven't seen anyone stabbed in the cheek with a fire-extinguisher pin before. Usually they're just beaten with the extinguisher itself. Arthur has sense to be unique at times, at least). So don't waste your money until it's really, really cheap.