The Mechanic was a so-so movie when Charles Bronson did it in 1972 and it’s still a so-so movie in 2011.

This time around it features Jason Statham as the efficent, if unbelievable assassin. It opens with him killing a drug kingpin surrounded by machine-gun toting guards. He drowns him in his own swimming pool and none of guards even notice. Yeah, right.

For his next assignment he’s asked to kill his mentor, played by Donald Sutherland. He does so reluctantly, and then because he feels guilty about it, takes Sutherland’s loser son, played by Ben Foster, as a sort of apprentice assassin.

Foster, whose character has been a screw-up until now, blossoms as a killer, even though he bungles his first assigments and gets the crap beaten out of him. And then he finds out that Statham killed his father while they are bumping off a slimy evangelist and the man (Tony Goldwyn) who ordered the death of his father. And the killing goes on.

Statham once again plays a testertone-fuelled, cold-blooded killer and he’s got the strong, silent type, anti-hero role down pat since he’s done it the same way in his last dozen outings. He is kind of like James Bond; but without the glamour, charm and wit.

The film also features lots of shoot-outs and mindless action sequences and the formula big explosions towards the end. You’ve seen this movie before several times, but it just keeps coming back again. For desperate action buffs only.

Rating: two deer out of five

Next Week on Video

Unstoppable features Denzel Washington trying to stop a runaway train.

Alf Cryderman is a Red Deer freelance writer a