Mechanic: Resurrection (2016) [Blu-ray]
Action | Crime | Thriller

Tagline: Revenge is a dangerous business

Arthur Bishop [Jason Statham] returns as the Mechanic in the sequel to the 2011 action-thiller. When the deceitful actions of a cunning but beautiful woman [Jessica Alba] make him to return to the life he left behind, Bishop's life is once again in danger as he has to complete an impossible list of assassinations of the most dangerous men in the world.

Storyline: Arthur Bishop, the master assassin who faked his death in hopes of putting that part of his ;life behind him, now lives a quiet life in Rio. But someone who knows who he is shows up and tells him, that if he wants to continue living this life, he will do three jobs for someone. Bishop tries to tell them he has the wrong man but they know who he is and if he won't do the job, they will take him but he gets away. He then goes to a resort in Thailand run by a friend, Mae, where he tries to find out who is looking for him. Later a woman named Gina shows up looking for medical assistance and Mae can't help but notice bruises all over her body. Mae deduces she's a battered woman and when Mae hears her being beaten, Mae asks Bishop to help her. He goes and kills the guy she's with. He kills the man and then sets fire to the boat he's on. But he sees that Gina has a photo of him. He deduces that they one who wants him, sent her. He confronts her and she admits that she works at a children's shelter in Cambodia and that someone told her if she didn't do what he said, the children would be endanger. While waiting for the man to come, they get close. And when the man's people comes, they grab them. Bishop is brought to the man who wants him to do the jobs and he tells Bishop that if he doesn't do it, Gina will be killed. So Bishop has no choice but to do it. Written by rcs0411@yahoo.com

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, November 19, 2016 Charles Bronson and Jason Statham share more in common than just having starred as The Mechanic, and these very similarities are probably at least one reason why Statham was selected to recreate the role of Arthur Bishop, assassin for hire, which Bronson had initially brought to life way back in 1972. Both Bronson and Statham have an immediately distinctive screen persona, one that tends to be no nonsense and not especially prone toward verbosity, and as such, both actors have at times at least been accused of not being all that skilled as emoters. Bronson seemed content to traipse his basically unaltered laconically stern tendencies through any number of action oriented movies, but Statham has tried, perhaps fitfully at times, to prove that he's a "real" actor in such films as Redemption. Statham also seems to be a bit more able to laugh (and to provoke laughter), both at himself and the general absurdities of action films, in everything from The Expendables franchise to one of the few films he's made that is intentionally funny, 2015's Melissa McCarthy vehicle Spy. Mechanic: Resurrection doesn't really provide any opportunities for Statham to display Sir Laurence Olivier level acting chops, nor does it rely on Statham's puckish if sometimes subliminal sense of humor, but it provides the same sort of "B-movie Mission: Impossible" thrills that I described the original Bronson Mechanic film as offering.

The absurdities are piled on pretty heavily from the get go in Mechanic: Resurrected, with Arthur Bishop (Jason Statham) living (supposedly) incognito in Rio after his (supposed) death at the end of The Mechanic. A gorgeous woman sits down next to him at his favorite watering hole and quickly discloses she knows whom he is and that her employer wants Bishop to take out three people. Bishop declines and a furious melee ensues involving a host of people the gorgeous gal has brought with her, which immediately starts tearing at already existing gaps of logic—if your goal is to convince someone to work for you, do you beat him up— and later shoot at him, for crying out loud—when he demurs? At least the sequence involves a fun if ludicrous scene on a gondola where Arthur gets to literally fly from his would be assailants.

Bishop takes refuge on an (supposedly) isolated island in Thailand that has a resort run by his friend Mei (Michelle Yeoh). Because this is The Mechanic franchise, Bishop is well prepared wherever he goes, and it turns out he has his own private thatched hut that is stuffed to the gills (or at least the briefcase) with all sorts of accoutrements that will come in handy. That includes a pair of binoculars, which Bishop starts using to keep tabs on a pretty young woman walking up and down the beach. That same woman ends up at Mei's general store like hut, and requests first aid supplies, showing a badly bruised arm which suggests domestic abuse. Later that evening, Mei alerts Bishop that there's a furious fight going on out on a nearby boat which obviously involves the young woman and a man. Bishop reluctantly agrees to a rescue, which leads to unexpected calamity for the guy, but a burgeoning relationship with the girl for Bishop, even though it turns out the girl, Gina Thorne (Jessica Alba), is a plant sent by the same guy who sent the first gaggle after Bishop in Rio. Already the plot contrivances have pushed Mechanic: Resurrection past the point of no return in terms of suspension of disbelief, and unfortunately this particular section of the film doesn't involve any outsized acrobatics on the part of Statham to keep the audience distracted from such improbabilities.

Here's some indication of just how silly the convoluted story is in this film—once Bishop rescues Gina, he quickly figures out that the scheme of the film's arch villain, Riah Craine (Sam Hazeldine), was to get Bishop to fall for Gina, at which point Craine would kidnap her and then have leverage to make Bishop kill the trio of people Craine wants dealt with (yeah, shooting at your prospective employee didn't work out so well, did it?). So, armed with this information, what happens? You guessed it—Bishop falls for Gina and Craine's goons show up and kidnap her, making her survival contingent upon Bishop successfully offing three folks (and making it look like an accident each time, of course). It's just laugh out loud ludicrous.

That at least gets the film to what really should have been its stock in trade to begin with, namely the convoluted "impossible missions" Bishop is tasked with. The first involves a warlord imprisoned in a Malaysian prison with several similarities to Alcatraz, including being on a remote island that is surrounded by shark infested waters. That means Bishop has to figure out how to get into the prison (something he of course achieves without much fuss), then into the confidences of the warlord (again—easy doin's), and, finally off the island once the warlord is dispatched (without being repetitive—no sweat).

The second kill is the film's most spectacular set piece, even if it doesn't last very long and is a patent ripoff of a somewhat similar scene in Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol. Bishop, again armed with every device he could possibly need, scales up the exterior of a skyscraper in Sydney, in order to prepare a little surprise for a bad guy who takes a swim everyday in a pool that juts out into the air from the side of the building's penthouse. Suffice it to say, the guy doesn't exit the pool in the normal fashion.

That brings Bishop to his last (supposed) victim, an arms dealer in Bulgaria named Max Adams (a rather twee Tommy Lee Jones). In a not very surprising twist, especially considering Jones' general affability in the role, Bishop has a new kinda sorta partner to rein in Crain's murderous tendencies (a hit list which is never really adequately explained to begin with). The film ticks off just about every action adventure cliché imaginable in its endgame, with Bishop taking out untold bad guys before (supposedly) meeting his fate (again). Yeah, right—we've seen this movie too many times before not to know what's coming next, even if there isn't another sequel.

In his The Mechanic Blu-ray review, my colleague Martin Liebman summed up the film by saying, "This is a visual tour-de-force and a structurally sound picture; it just has no soul." The same could well be said of Mechanic: Resurrection, minus the structurally sound part. This film's screenplay is such a contrived mess that even devoted adrenaline junkies may not be able tolerate it. That said, the film provides a nonstop array of breathtaking locations and some fun set pieces, and for those considering a purchase, the disc offers top notch technical merits.

[CSW] -2.6- It was fine. Kind of a Mission Impossible meets Mcgiver. The action scenes got repetitive and it did the Commando thing where the hero killed 1000 people and got a cut on his arm. Statham gets to show what he is really good at -- diving. As a former Olympic diver for Great Britain, he gets to do a nice swan dive from a cliff. Also, he's bulked up for this one and spends about half the movie without his shirt. It was okay. I mean if you have seen one of these you have seen them all. I was okay about it while watching but two days later I remember nothing other than the yacht and the swimming pool. Rent This.
[V4.5-A5.0] MPEG-4 AVC - D-Box


º º