The 2011 Jason Statham movie The Mechanic was an entertaining remake of the Charles Bronson movie of the same name but wasn’t quite as atmospheric.
Statham was on fine badass form and Ben Foster was suitably creepy as always; the film hardly set the world on fire though with a worldwide box office haul of around $62 million worldwide.
The story was nothing new and the action was quite uninspired for a lot of it, with a lack of a truly great villain.
I think we were all surprised when Lionsgate announced a sequel entitled “Mechanic: Resurrection” slated for release on Jan. 22, 2016.
According to Variety, shooting started in Bangkok, Thailand on Nov. 4 with Statham reprising his title role as Arthur Bishop. The story is as follows: When someone from his past forces him back into the business, Bishop has to complete an impossible list of assassinations of the most dangerous men in the world.
I actually really like the sound of the story and the fact that it’s a sequel, rather than a remake means they have the freedom to do whatever they like with the characters without worrying about comparisons to the original.
This film really grabbed my attention with the recent cast announcements which includes Michelle Yeoh, Jessica Alba and Tommy Lee Jones.
Director Dennis Gansel doesn’t have a huge resume with mostly low budget indie flicks to his name. At this stage it’s kind of an unknown quantity whether he’ll be the right choice for the movie but I’m willing to give him a shot and see if he can come up with something rather special.
If you’ve got Tommy Lee Jones in the cast then that’s definitely a positive sign. I hope he’s on bad guy form as I haven’t seen him play a classic villain, really since Under Siege. I want THAT kind of over the top character in this follow-up. There are very few truly memorable villains recently outside of comic book characters so hopefully we get someone totally insane.
Jessica Alba is an interesting choice too and will no doubt play the love interest but I’d prefer it if she was a badass assassin instead. The biggest surprise was seeing action legend Michelle Yeoh on the cast list; I hope she has a big role and gets plenty of action scenes. For me, the cast is what’s really selling this and gives me hope that the script/story will be interesting.
Considering the box office haul of the original then I’m not expecting any records to be broken for this sequel, but I think it will do respectable business. Literally I reckon it will make about $80-100 million worldwide. Personally I’d love it to make hundreds of millions but audiences aren’t really looking for hard R action movies these days, but you never know.
The fact that’s it’s release date is in January is immediately not a great sign as that’s where movies usually go to die however, sometimes there is the odd sleeper hit like Taken that surprises us.
So Hit or Miss? I think somewhere in the middle; as always it will probably make more money internationally. It won’t break any records but will likable make its budget back at least and will becoming a sleeper hit on home video.