Arthur Bishop was a hit man, but no more. For months, he and his boat have been bobbing around in Rio de Janeiro’s harbor. He’s drunk the occasional beer, caught the occasional fish, maybe watched the occasional synchronized swimming match. The only thing that Bishop kills these days is time.
But there’s always demand for a good assassin. So when a beautiful woman plops down next to him at his favorite cantina and offers him a job, he isn’t entirely surprised. Her employer wants three people dead, she tells him. And that man wants all the assassinations to look like an accident.
But that’s not Bishop’s scene anymore. He’s so serious about not killing anyone again that he rejects her offer and promptly stabs, grills and sets alight several armed henchman. Yeah, that’ll show them my killing days are over, perhaps he thinks to himself. That’ll teach ’em I’m not about to kill anyone el— oh.
OK, so maybe killing isn’t completely off limits. But sure as shootin’, he’s not about to kill for money. No, if he’s going to murder someone, he’s gonna do it because he wants to—and on his own dime, too. He figures he’s killed enough in Rio for now, so he heads to his other safe house in Thailand.
But once there, wouldn’t you know it: He meets another beautiful woman who offers him the same job. Only this woman, Gina, isn’t so much a paid henchman as an innocent victim. She runs an orphanage in Cambodia for trafficked children. And if Bishop doesn’t take the job this time, well, she’s been told that she, all her employees and all her children will be killed or sold into slavery.
It seems Bishop has no choice. He has to save Gina and her surrogate kids—even if he has to kill every hired thug, armed guard and cogent plot point to do it.
Yeppers, Bishop’s gonna make a killing in his rejuvenated business—and we don’t mean that metaphorically.
Gina runs an orphanage for previously trafficked children, and she cares deeply for each and every one of the nameless, faceless kids we see ever-so-briefly on screen somewhere in the background.
And despite Bishop’s messy occupation, we should give at least a golfer’s clap for him. He cares for those kids too, apparently. But he mostly cares about Gina. Bishop first meets her, in fact, while protecting her from her physically abusive companion. From then on, he goes to great lengths to preserve and protect her life from dastardly villains.
An arms dealer talks about how he has a soft spot for the world’s David-and-Goliath stories. Someone appears to practice a form of voodoo: His room is filled with candles, strange concoctions and a human skull (though we also see a cross hanging on his wall).
Bishop and Gina are—surprise!—attracted to each other. At first their relationship seems to be a way to fool the bad guys into thinking they’re a couple (because the bad guys’ whole scheme is predicated upon the two of them becoming a couple). But they only manage to fake their relationship for, it seems, a matter of minutes before it becomes something real. They dance. They endearingly smear stuff on each other’s faces. They kiss. And then they take a roll in the hay.
By R-rated movie standards, the love scene is relatively genteel. Shirts come off. We see Gina’s bra from the back. (Bishop also grasps her backside, still covered in a short skirt.) Later that night, Gina sits up in bed, apparently unclothed but mostly covered by sheets. She also scampers about the beach (and swims through the water) in a slim bikini, showcasing her figure. Her dresses tend to have necklines that dip, too.
We hear, in general terms, about children being sexually trafficked. One of Bishop’s targets made part of his fortune in that loathsome business, specializing in “underage sex workers.” Bishop masquerades at one point as a wanted sexual predator to gain access to a Malaysian prison. We see pictures of the real predator hanging out with girls who may be in their mid-to-late teens.
Violence isn’t just part of Mechanic: Resurrection. Violence is the movie’s whole reason for being. And while Bishop only (?) has to kill three people to fulfill his duties, about 20 times that number eventually succumb to the assassin’s assaults.
Some die through gunfire—bullets clearly penetrating heads, shoulders and chests, wounds that are sometimes accompanied by blood spray and splatter. (Bishop also caps one guy in the leg in what appears to be a non-lethal shot.) Bishop kills others with knives or other sharp implements, slicing through necks, limbs and other bits of soft tissue. He blows assailants up with grenades and explosives. He sets men on fire. He shoves the face of one victim onto an exposed grill. Another he wraps in chains, ensuring that the villain won’t be able to escape a boat that’s about to explode. Still another is apparently killed via an accidental blow to the head, and that man’s shown lying in a pool of his own blood.
Some of Bishop’s kills—ironically the ones that are supposed to look accidental—are more visually brutal. Bishop smothers one man to the point of unconsciousness, then force-feeds the guy a lethal mixture of his own illicit drugs to finish him off. Bishop sabotages another victim’s outlandish swimming pool—suspended 76 floors above the ground. When the pool cracks open, the man is essentially flushed out of the receptacle and plunges to his death. In the background, we see passers-by wail over the slab of his remains on the ground.
Explosions blow holes in prisons, collapse bridges and sink boats. A good person gets shot. Someone nearly drowns in a shallow hot tub. People hit, kick and sometimes pull the hair of others. Gina sports a cut on her face and bruises on her arms. Later, we see and hear (from a distance) a man hit and kick her. We hear about how someone was beaten to death.
About 10 f-words, four or five s-words and a smattering of additional profanities, including “a–,” “b–ch,” “b–tard,” “d–n,” “h—” and the British profanity “bloody.” God’s name is misused at least three times, twice with “d–n.”
Bishop and others drink beer. He smuggles an explosive fuse and a tracking device in some cigarettes. A man’s prison cell is filled with recognizable drugs (such as cocaine strewn across a mirror) and stranger broths and powders—perhaps more natural narcotics or hallucinogens that the user utilizes in strange religious ceremonies.
None.
Mechanic: Resurrection is the Donkey Kong of the cinematic world. There’s not much of a plot, and what there is doesn’t make a lot of sense. But there is a girl to save, a bad guy to beat … and a whole lot of obstacles to overcome in order to reach them.
Unfortunately, most of those obstacles are living, breathing people. And Bishop—the movie’s frenetic Mario—isn’t inclined to just leap over them and go on his way. No, he’s gotta smash ’em. And by smash, I mean kill: with bullets, with knives, even with the occasional high-quality grill.
The result is a lot of sound and fury without reason or meaning—an excuse to see star Jason Statham do his thing for 100 minutes and go home. And maybe, like Donkey Kong, you’ll marvel at how much time, and how many quarters, you just spent on the thing.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
