The Mechanic

Mean Mechanic Movie Musters Mayhem
The Mechanic, R, ***, Jason Statham, Ben Foster, Tony Goldwyn, Donald Sutherland, Jeff Chase. CBS film. Director Simon West. Length 92 minutes.

Movie fans may remember the original movie by the same title. Charles Bronson played the lead role. It was a very unique film for the time. It did not have any dialogue for the first fifteen minutes, and it had an excellent surprise ending.
We now have the new version. I did not have very high expectations for this one, but I have to say it was a pretty good action movie. Jason Statham plays Arthur Bishop the role Bronson inhabited in the original version.
Arthur is called a mechanic. It means he is a hit man. His job is to kill bad people for money and make the death look like an accident. Bishop’s friend, Harry (Donald Sutherland) helped Arthur when he was young.
Arthur’s next assignment is to eliminate Harry. Harry makes an interesting statement, “I suppose I have crossed the Rubicon.” The idiom for that is to pass a point of no return. This short spoiler is necessary to set up the rest of the plot.
Harry has a son Steve (Ben Foster). Steve and Harry are at odds, but after his father’s death, Steve feels differently about his father.
Steve knows what Arthur does for a living, and he wants to be a part of the trade. Arthur decides to be his mentor. He probably has a little guilt for what he did to Steve’s father. However, Steve does not know it was Arthur who eliminated his father. Because Steve is young, cocky, and arrogant he does not follow the advice of Arthur in his first assignment. Steve changes they way he kills his target, and everything becomes messy. Of course, this causes problems. The people Arthur works for did not like the way the job was handled.
This movie has been updated to include a lot of the disgusting things we all read in the paper or see on television in today’s world. The film has extreme violence, nudity, and sexual content. This is what I mean by updating it in the context of some of the things going on in the world today. In other words it mirrors some events in our weird society. This is just a cautionary statement. It has shoot outs, car chases and lots of scenes that include brutal violence, blood and gore. The new movie is much more violent than the 1972 PG version of “The Mechanic.”
The movie takes on sadism and masochism in a very brief scene. The audience observes creeps, perverts, and some very disgusting people. This was probably done in order to show that Arthur was eliminating bad guys.
Arthur has a house on the Bayou worth mentioning. It is similar to the house in the original film, except this time the house is in the marshland.
Arthur plans his hits with meticulous precision. Of course the young apprentice Steve thinks he knows best. It is much like the Kung Fu television series in that the older guy is trying to teach the young “grasshopper” the best way to do the job.
Watch for a scene in the first part of the movie. It has a clue as to what is going to take place later. As in all professions, one must always look at the details.
Good judgment sometimes comes with experience and age. Poor judgment is acting without thinking or having the experience to make the correct decision.
The movie changes just enough to make it semi original. I was not disappointed in the way the director handled this remake. Some key scenes were changed, but overall it was an interesting look at what was done with the excellent original movie.