My Thoughts on “A Working Man ♂︎”

 

(This is the poster for A Working Man ♂︎.)

 

 

 

I was starting to think I wasn’t going to see any new movies this year, in 2025, the way it was shaping up. Every time there was a new release, I kept thinking that it was going to pass me by and I was going to have to wait until it was available on streaming or VOD (video-on-demand) because every time there was a movie I was remotely interesting in that came out in theaters, I didn’t have any money 💵 to go. What I was imagining was going to end up happening was what happened with some of the movies from 2024 that I didn’t get to see when they actually came out. Like, I missed Venom: The Last Dance, I didn’t get to see it in theaters when it came out. I wrote a review of that movie if you’re interested in reading it. I had to wait until it was out on Blu-Ray 💿 to finally watch it. The same thing happened with The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, the World War II spy action comedy thriller from Guy Ritchie, that was a movie that came out last year, in 2024, that I wanted to see when it came out in theaters and I didn’t get the chance to. I still haven’t had the chance to see it. 

 

The same thing with Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie 🐿️, I know a lot of people didn’t like that movie, but I like Sandy Cheeks 🐿️, she’s my favorite character on SpongeBob 🧽, and I want to see it for myself if it’s really as bad as people said it was. Hopefully, I’ll get to watch Plankton: The Movie before the year ends, but I want to see The Sandy Cheeks Movie 🐿️ before I watch Plankton: The Movie. What I have heard about it is pretty encouraging, as people who have seen it said it was way better than The Sandy Cheeks Movie 🐿️ and even felt like classic SpongeBob 🧽, which doesn’t fair any better for my girl ♀︎, Sandy 🐿️. If what people said was true, she got the worst of the two movies. 

 

There was also the Alex Garland sci-fi war movie, Civil War 🇺🇸 (2024), which I’m a bit skeptical of that movie and how well it handles the whole concept of a Second Civil War taking place in America 🇺🇸, but in modern times, in present day 🤨. From what it seems like they took the cowardly route in how to approach that subject matter, the path of least resistance. My cousin also saw it and apparently didn’t really like it, and I just his opinion and his taste in movies than I do random people on the Internet 🛜 who I don’t know and never met before. So, I don’t know. I already wrote out some stuff for that, and I don’t want it to go waste, so I still intend on reviewing Civil War 🇺🇸 (2024) someday. Maybe, I won’t buy it on Blu-Ray 💿, I’ll just rent a digital copy of it off of Apple TV+, or on Amazon, or wherever it’s available on digital. If I end up liking it, then maybe I’ll buy it on physical, but if I end up disliking it, then I won’t buy it and I’ll just leave it at that. I’ll write my review and be on my way. 

 

This also means that I won’t watch Alex Garland’s movie this year, Warfare (2025) until I see Civil War 🇺🇸 (2024). Okay, he didn’t direct or write it all himself like he did on Civil War 🇺🇸 (2024), he co-directed and co-wrote it with an actual Iraq War veteran 🇮🇶, Ray Mendoza, who wanted to tell his story about his experiences in the war, or at least something fictional that approximated his experiences. And he worked with an experienced filmmaker to do it. Not always the best, but definitely experienced. There’s a couple of other 2024 movies that I didn’t get to see that I was vaguely interested in watching, like The Wild Robot, Dirty Angels, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (2024), and also maybe that Latvian movie 🇱🇻, Flow 💦🐈‍⬛ about the cat 🐈‍⬛ surviving an apocalyptic flood that won Best Animated Picture at this year’s Oscar’s. 

 

This one isn’t a movie, but it was something I wanted to watch last year, but didn’t get the chance, Terminator Zero, the first Terminator anime series ever made, and it’s by the same studio responsible for the majority of the Ghost in the Shell stuff, Production IG. Surely, they gotta turn out something at least okay. Maybe not great, or even good, but at least okay. And since it’s an anime made in Japan 🇯🇵, Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn’t involved, meaning that it’ll at least try something new and won’t be bogged down by referencing the older Terminator (mostly just The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day), repeating the same lines we’ve heard over and over again. “I’ll be back” and “Come with me if you want to live.” They probably say that second one in the show at some point since it’s another time travel story and it’s about someone protecting somebody from Terminators. But, you know what I’m saying. 

 

Schwarzenegger has dragged this franchise down, as it feels the need to include him in some way, even if it makes no sense. The franchise is worse for still having Schwarzenegger involved, which is why I am of the belief that the Predator franchise dodged a bullet by not having him involved past the first movie. It didn’t get ruined by needing to bring him back over and over again, even though they tried multiple times to bring him back into the fold. The Predator franchise is better off now because it managed to move past and beyond Schwarzenegger. Plus, he’s in 70s, and is definitely not as spry as he used to be. It’s no longer believable to have him be a Terminator anymore, since why would Skynet send out T-800s or T-850s that look, sound, and move like old men ♂︎? It takes away the believability when these are supposed to be efficient, strong, and even agile killing machines. 

 

So, it’s always nice when we get a Terminator project without Arnold, they always turn out better that way. Think about Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Terminator Salvation, those are the two entries in the Terminator franchise that have fared the best out all of the other movies (not that Sarah Connor Chronicles is a movie, it’s a TV series), and the one thing they had in common is that they didn’t have Arnold or didn’t have a lot of him. Salvation didn’t even have the real Arnold at all, they just had a CGI version of him, a CGI version of him that didn’t hold up and didn’t even really look that good at the time, but they still had it. Hopefully someday, I can watch Terminator Zero. The only problem is that it’s on Netflix, and Netflix’s password sharing restrictions have made it difficult to access it. I can only watch Netflix every once in a while when that firewall or whatever doesn’t come on and I can pass through no problem. I wish Netflix never implemented that policy, they locked so many people out of their platform. The majority of people who watch Netflix do so through password sharing because paying for all the subscriptions to all the streaming services is expensive. You can’t really do it on your own unless you’re pulling in five or six figures 💵 a year. We have to use my aunt’s accounts to watch anything on any of these streaming services because we ourselves can’t afford to pay any of the subscriptions or all. I know for a fact we aren’t alone in that. Streaming has become cable but way worse. 

So, I’m glad that I got to see one of the movies I was interested in seeing this year, the year it actually came out. I’m glad A Working Man ♂︎ is my first movie of 2025 because it is pretty good. Jason Statham and David Ayer knocked it out of the park with this one, just like they did with last year’s Beekeeper 🐝. It was either going to be this or Plankton: The Movie. It might end up being the only new movie in 2025 that I actually see in 2025, unless I somehow manage to see Jurassic World Rebirth while it’s still in theaters or when it goes to streaming and VOD. But, I’ll still have to wait a whole month until that movie comes out since it doesn’t come out until July 2, 2025. I don’t even know what movies are coming out in June except M3GAN 2.0, which I have no interest or intention of watching since I didn’t even watch the first M3GAN, when it come out or after. I’ll find out next week, and as the month of June rolls along. 

 

Oh, and there’s also Predator: Killer of Killers, the animated Predator anthology film, but I’m kind of hesitant about that one because I don’t really like the animation or art style. But, I may just check it out since it’s going to be on Hulu, and unlike Netflix, Hulu doesn’t have any password sharing restrictions and thus I have easy access to it, and I need more Predator content. I know a certain Patrick H. Willems would disapprove of my use of the word “content” in this context, but I don’t give a fuck. Let him be mad if he wants, it’s not like he’ll ever read this. He’s a big time YouTuber with half a million subscribers, and I’m just a small fry blogger without a single follower. Maybe I chose the wrong platform, maybe I should’ve gone on Substack, but I don’t think they’re conducive to the kind of content that I make. They seem to be strictly about politics, and there doesn’t seem to be any room for anything about movies, TV shows, and video games. If I’m wrong about that, please let me know. I did write about the trailer to Predator: Killer of Killers if you’re interested. 

If A Working Man ♂︎ does end up being the only new movie I see in 2025 before the end of the year, it’ll mean that I’ll only have one movie to talk about in my New Year’s Eve Recap. If I manage to watch and review Jurassic World Rebirth or any other movies in 2025 before the year ends, then I’ll only have a few movies to talk about in my New Year’s Eve Recap this year. That is if I even still decide to a New Year’s Eve Recap this year. I was hoping that I was going to be able to take a break today (Sunday May 25, 2025), but when my grandma suggested that we watch this movie together, I couldn’t pass it up, and so I’m writing a review of this movie, the same day I posted my post about movies I want Brandon Tenold to review on his channel. A reviewer’s job is never done, even if I’m not getting paid for this and this is just a hobby for me. 

I was hoping for a Beekeeper 🐝 sequel, and I still am, but this was the next best thing. In fact, when I first saw the trailer to this movie, I left a comment that said “I was hoping for a Beekeeper 🐝 sequel, but this will do.” One thing that I didn’t know about this movie going into it was that Sylvester Stallone was involved in it. He’s both a writer and a producer on the movie. I kind of have mixed feelings about him because he openly endorsed Trump earlier this year, he became a Trump supporter, and even gave a speech at an event that Trump was hosting at Mar-A-Lago celebrating his return to the White House. And I don’t too care for celebrities who drink the Trump kool-aid for whatever reason, whether it’s because they think that they can save their fledgling careers by hitching themselves to Trump, or if it’s because they’re true believers in Trumpism and far-right politics in general. But with Stallone, it’s complicated, because I still like him as an actor and as a filmmaker, and I’ve liked the movies he’s been involved in that I’ve seen (Cliffhanger is still a solid action flick), whether it was beyond the camera or in front of it. That probably explains the plot since the last Rambo movie, Rambo: Last Blood 🩸 also involved human trafficking. It even involved a Latina woman ♀︎ getting kidnapped and a white guy ♂︎ who was close to her going to find her. In Last Blood 🩸 of course, it was Rambo and in this movie, it’s Levon. It also explains why Levon is a slightly more vulnerable and fallible hero.

He isn’t as invincible or as infallible as Adam Clay was in The Beekeeper 🐝, Levon does make a couple of mistakes here and there. And I think it works for this movie because it isn’t as over-the-top or as crazy as The Beekeeper 🐝. The Beekeeper 🐝 embraced its ridiculousness and went with it, while this movie tries to be a tad more realistic, a tad more human. Not that The Beekeeper 🐝 lacked any humanity or any heart ❤️, it didn’t, but it did take place in a more heightened reality and didn’t deal with as serious of a subject matter as this movie does. The Beekeeper 🐝 was largely about phone scammers whereas this movie is about human traffickers. But, it just as satisfying to see Levon kill human traffickers just as it was seeing Adam Clay kill phone scammers. No body likes human traffickers (except other human traffickers and the creepy fucks who buy from them), they’re the scum of the Earth 🌎. No body particularly cares if you kill them, a lot of people would probably want to kill them themselves, especially those who had loved ones ❤️ who were trafficked. 

 

I would much rather watch this movie again than watch that shitty Sound of Freedom movie with Jim Caviezel, it’s a much better movie about a guy ♂︎ fighting human trafficking than that piece of propaganda, especially since the guy ♂︎ that movie is about is a terrible guy ♂︎ in real life and didn’t really do any of the things that movie made it seem like he did. That’s another thing too that I didn’t know about this movie until after I saw it, apparently it’s based on a book 📖 called Levon’s Trade, which is another thing that separates it from The Beekeeper 🐝. The Beekeeper 🐝 is a completely original movie that’s not based on any prior existing material, while this movie is based on a book 📖. I don’t know how accurate it is to the book 📖, probably not a whole lot. Fans of the book 📖 let know how accurate the movie is to the book 📖. 

The movie does involve the Russian mafia 🇷🇺, which I wasn’t really expecting. I thought the movie was going to involve Mexican drug cartels 🇲🇽 since the victim in this movie is of Latino descent, but no it didn’t. The only cartel members we see in the whole movie is at the beginning when they’re harassing one of Levon’s co-workers at the construction site 🏗️, and I’m not even sure if they were supposed to be cartel members. At first I thought that scene was going to set the main conflict in motion since Levon beat those guys ♂︎ up at the beginning, they were going to back and kidnap the daughter of Joe and Carla Garcia (Michael Peña and Noemi Gonzalez’s characters) and sell her into sex slavery just to get back at them for what Levon did. Stepping in their business that didn’t concern them. And then the rest of the movie would be Levon tracking them, killing them all, and rescuing the girl ♀︎, shutting down their entire sex trafficking operation. That’s kind of what happens, but not quite. There’s no Mexican cartels 🇲🇽 in this movie other than those guys ♂︎ at the beginning who may or may not be cartel. 

Instead, the daughter gets kidnapped by these people who are working for the Russian mafia 🇷🇺, for this guy ♂︎ named Dimi who is running the sex trafficking operations of the Russian mafia 🇷🇺. But, they also work with this biker gang 🏍️ who operate out of a saloon, who deal in meth, like they run a meth lab and cook and sell a bunch of meth. They went full Breaking Bad Walter White/Heisenberg with that. Their connection with the Russian mafia 🇷🇺 and their involvement in sex trafficking is supposed to be a secret from the biker gang 🏍️ I guess, like that one bearded guy ♂︎ in the hat (played by Cokey Falkow) makes it seem like them working for the Russians 🇷🇺 is a bad thing. But, the leader of the biker gang 🏍️, Dutch already knows that they’re working with the Russians 🇷🇺, him and Dimi are in cahoots. Him and his gang are apart of the larger organization. That’s why he comes to rescue when Dimi’s trap house is attacked by Levon. I don’t know, that part was kind of confusing to me. They do actually say the term “a working man ♂︎” in the movie, Dutch refers to Levon as that in the movie in the scene where he meets him and Levon beats up all his guys ♂︎. Honestly, they could’ve also called this movie, Hard Hat 👷‍♂️ and it would’ve worked just fine since it’s about a construction worker 👷‍♂️ (with a military background and military training) going to save a girl ♀︎ from sex traffickers. 

There isn’t as much action in this movie as there is in The Beekeeper 🐝, a lot of is Levon investigating, trying to find the location where the daughter is being kept. Like, he interrogates the bartender who helped the kidnappers, then he kills these Russian mob enforcers 🇷🇺 (foot soldiers for the organization), establishing a connection with the Russian mafia 🇷🇺, then he tracks down a Russian mafia leader 🇷🇺 (a high ranking member), interrogates him, finds out that this guy ♂︎ Dimi is the head of the Russian mafia 🇷🇺’s sex trafficking ring. Then he attempts to infiltrate the organization by posing as a buyer wanting to buy some of the biker gang 🏍️’s meth. But, this ultimately doesn’t work since he immediately gets caught, the Russians 🇷🇺 learn his true identity and threaten his family to get back at him for killing some of their own. Once this happens, Levon decides to go all-out war on them, and rescue the girl ♂︎ guns blazing. 

So, it’s a lot more like Taken or Stallone’s own Rambo: Last Blood 🩸 in that regard. This part of the movie actually reminded me a lot of the movie Snitch with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, because of the heavy emphasis on investigating and drug trafficking. I haven’t actually seen Snitch in a long time, but I do remember liking it. Maybe I should rewatch it and review it for this blog. But, once Levon confronts Dimi (after meeting him in that fake drug deal), takes him hostage, forces him to show him the location where the girl is being kept, and then kills him after giving him the information he wants, the movie becomes more of a full on action movie. Levon doesn’t just fight these Russian mafia 🇷🇺 guys ♂︎ with tactical gear and assault rifles, but also the biker gang 🏍️, which he takes out with relative easy, including Dutch, who came from a military background just like Levon. Levon even honors him like a military man after he kills him, even though he was involved in drug trafficking and sex trafficking, and was fighting to protect a sex trafficking operation. Any honorable trait that Dutch had before turning to a life of crime was pretty much all gone by that point. 

 

That whole sequence was pretty awesome. It made the sparse amount of action in the rest of the film completely worth it. It was even satisfying when Levon finally killed the kidnappers who took the girl ♀︎ on behalf of this sex trafficking ring in the first place, who were pretty incompetent and bad at their jobs. Or perhaps they weren’t, and the girl ♀︎, Jenny Garcia is just a real tough cookie. She’s a fighter. She is not a helpless victim by any means, she fight back anytime she gets, and she even almost escapes and would have had she not been tricked and picked up by those two crooked cops that Levon encountered before on a different occasion. 

 

Though, he doesn’t kill the female accomplice ♀︎, Artemis, Jenny is the one that kills her and it is so satisfying to see her die because she was such an annoying bitch through the whole movie. The movie does a good job at making you hate the villains and want to see them die. At first, I thought the movie was going to do that cliché thing where you think the villain’s dead, only for them to get back up for one last attempt to kill the good guys before being killed for real. Especially since they had that one lingering shot of Artemis after she died, making me think she wasn’t really dead and she might get back up and try to kill Jenny one last time. But no, that never happens, and I’m glad. Unless she really is alive, and they’re saving her for a potential sequel. 

The movie does kind of end in a way that makes you think there’s going to be a sequel because they didn’t really resolve that whole issue with that Russian mafia boss 🇷🇺 who wanted revenge on Levon for killing his two sons and his brother. He never confronts Levon directly in the entire life, and is still left standing after it’s all said and done. He wanted to continue to go after him, but was overruled by that other boss on the high table, who tells him to just let Levon and Jenny go because revenge isn’t good for business. So, if there is a sequel, maybe it’ll be about that boss continuing to go after Levon despite what the other boss said, since he can’t let this go. He has to avenge the death of his family. But since this movie, and any potential sequel it might have will involve Russians 🇷🇺, I don’t know if my idea for a Beekeeper 🐝 sequel will still since I proposed that villains in the next movie be Russians 🇷🇺, a rival organization to the Beekeepers 🐝, the Bear Wranglers 🐻 or Bear Trappers 🐻 or something like that. Something involving bears 🐻 and they’d be Russian 🇷🇺 because bears 🐻 are often associated with Russia 🇷🇺. 

I didn’t really watch any of the reviews of this movie before watching it, except for a few snippets of Jeremy Jahns’s review, because I didn’t want to spoiled on anything and I didn’t want my opinion to be influenced in anyway by them. So, I really didn’t know what the critical reception to this movie was going in, but it seems like it was about the same as the reception to Beekeeper 🐝. Most critics thought it was stupid, and couldn’t take it seriously. Like, they thought that the movie was too ridiculous and they couldn’t enjoy it for that reason. But, what do they know right? As long as my grandma and I enjoyed it that’s all that matters. The movie grossed $98.9 million 💵 at the worldwide box office on a budget of $40 million 💵. So, it did okay, but not great. I really don’t know if it will actually get a sequel if a sequel was ever in the cards. But, even if it doesn’t, it still fairly works as a stand alone movie. Besides that whole Russian mob 🇷🇺 subplot, everyone gets their happy ending. The scene where Levon brings Jenny back home to her family was heartwarming as all hell, it even made me choke up a bit 🥲, and the scene where Levon reunites with his own daughter, who was staying with his blind friend 🦯, Gunny Lefferty, was also pretty good. Not as good as scene where Jenny reunites with her family, but still pretty good 🙂‍↕️👍.