The Mechanic

Every actor known for action movies has a few in their filmography that are just there. Nothing amazing, nothing terrible. Just a movie that some people see, some don't, and most everybody forgets. Schwarzenegger has Raw Deal. Stallone has Cobra. Willis has Striking Distance. Jason Statham has The Mechanic. There is nothing notable, to the good or the bad, about The Mechanic. It is a serviceable movie for a weekend afternoon. A random pick after perusing a streaming service's endless ribbon of thumbnails, mainly because it's noise and action and you can play a game on your Switch or crochet or do some online shopping while it plays in the background, and you'll never really lose your place. Assassin, organization, double-cross, revenge. You've seen it before. You've probably lost count how many times, in fact, and The Mechanic offers no new real spin on the concept. But Statham is good at being the grizzled hardcase, so he's watchable even when the movie itself is little more than functional. And when it's over, you'll forget it until that random Saturday afternoon eleven months later, when there's nothing on but golf and infomercials, and you scroll through a streaming service and see the thumbnail, and you wonder if you saw this or not. And then you'll watch ten minutes of it, say "oh yeah, I think we saw this" ... and then proceed to watch it again anyway while looking up new air filters for your furnace. That's The Mechanic in a nutshell.