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In the end, A Working Man takes itself rather too seriously for a movie that unironically uses Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata as a recurring musical motif.

Though Statham delivers his end, Ayer’s visual language is a mess... [but] if “The Meg,” “Wrath of Man” or “The Beekeeper” proved anything, it’s that it doesn’t matter how outlandish or overcooked the movie is. Nothing can slow down Statham.

In the grand tradition of The Cannon Group, David Ayer reteams with star Jason Statham in the wake of The Beekeeper’s commercial success to deliver us yet another disposable actioner with A Working Man. If we were in the 1980s, this would definitely be something we’d see from Charles Bronson’s numerous collaborations with J. Lee Thompson: films light on plot but heavy on badassery.

A Working Man provides familiar, comforting pleasures as Statham churns out gruff line deliveries when he’s not killing, punching or stabbing anyone who gets in his way. Reteaming with director David Ayer (The Beekeeper), Statham barely breaks a sweat as he goes through the motions of this over-long, under-nourished action-thriller.

A Working Man, adapted by Ayer and Sylvester Stallone from Chuck Dixon’s novel Levon’s Trade, fails to offer anything that allows it to distinguish itself in the crowded genre of revenge films besides its retrograde politics.

At its best, a movie like A Working Man functions as an update to the hard-boiled detective story... But Stallone and Ayer don’t have the patience for too much skullduggery; skullsmashery is more their thing, and as an action movie, A Working Man doesn’t reach the giddy highs of Statham’s best.

The film feels overlong at nearly two hours, with repetitiveness settling in early. But it does have its enjoyable eccentric touches, several of which smack of Stallone, who often infuses his portrayals with subtle humor.

For the second time in as many years, Ayer has cast Statham as the last good man in a world gone bad. And — for the second time in as many years — Ayer has created a piece of AMC A-List cinema par excellence by emphasizing the actor’s sheer force of will as a spectacle unto itself.

A Working Man may be the Jason Statham-iest film ever to Stath. With its man-on-a-mission, hunt-for-a-kidnapped-girl narrative, it borrows wholeheartedly from the likes of Commando and Taken, and effectively steals from John Wick in the “weapons sommelier” played by David Harbour. But this is first and foremost a Jason Statham film, boiled down to its essential ingredients — losing all flavour and substance in the process.