Plot: Hired assassin Arthur Bishop (Jason Stathum) is hired to kill one of his friends, and after doing so undertakes to teach the friend's son, Steve (Ben Foster), how to be an assassin because he feels obligated. The two assassinate some guys, and blow up some stuff. Someone double crosses Arthur, then Arthur and Steve hunt that guy down.
Review: This movie was fun to watch while I was watching it. In the theater I was thinking that the violence was stronger than average, and followed the story easily. The killing was bloodless, but the killers were cold-blooded -- killing without morality.
After I left the movie, I started thinking about how little of the movie made sense. All Action movies are like this, but The Mechanic is worse. It glosses over a million details. Some action movies have a who-dun-it element, and it is interesting to follow the twists of the story and guess what will happen -- we don't get that here.
Arthur is far more interested in Steve than any woman. Arthur does not have a girl friend, just a regular prostitute who does not even know his name.
I liked the Jason Statham character, and he is the only likeable character even though he kills people for money. The fact that he was likeable is a tribute to the acting and direction.
There were good quality special effects and good art direction. Bland soundtrack.
There is a homosexual element in the Arthur and Steve relationship and it is made more obvious by the Steve's homosexual bait assassination plot line. [VAGUE SPOILER] That assassin is just like Arthur, and Steve kills him. It foreshadows the end of the movie.
Cast: Jason Statham, Ben Foster, Donald Sutherland
Directed by: Simon West; based on the story by Lewis John Carlino (originally filmed in 1972)
Rating: 2.0 stars; Fun to watch; Just accept that most of the action scenes make no sense. Probably deserves to be 1.5 stars based on merit, but it was enjoyable anyway.
More: I like the cool looking tube amplifier. It looks cool even though anyone who prefers tubes to transistors must be an idiot. It is like a Steam-Punk Music system. No way would I want to lovingly clean dust off vinyl records before I played music.
Yes, I know tubes are different because they distort more, why would want distortion to listen to classical? Maybe for distortion guitar rock or electrified Pop, but I don't get tubes for classical.
