DVD reviews: The Mechanic | NEDS
THOUGH The Mechanic is a remake of a Charles Bronson movie, it confirms its star, gravelly voiced South Londoner Jason Statham, as the modern-day Chuck Norris: a one-man, head-cracking army able to deliver no-nonsense action even when the film surrounding him is nothing but nonsense.
Here he plays a hitman who, after being set up to kill his mentor (Donald Sutherland), takes the latter's errant son (played by a wiry and wired Ben Foster) under his wing, teaching him (almost) everything he knows so they can go after the real villain.
Advertisement
Hide AdThere's not much more to it than that, but Statham has such a unique presence in the modern action movie world that he simply needs to growl his way through the proficiently helmed action (courtesy of Con Air director Simon West) to ensure the film's entertainment value is a good deal higher than a lot of Friday night rental choices.
The fact that he's starting to develop his own recognisable quirks (he's started wearing alarming chunky-knit cardigans in his movies) is another sign that he's carving out an interesting place for himself in the annals of B-movie history.
Surely that call from Quentin Tarantino can't be too far away?
NEDS
E1, 15.99
SET among the Non-Educated Delinquents of 1970s Glasgow, Peter Mullan's third feature as a writer/director was an minor – and unexpected – hit earlier this year, which just goes to show that there's a place for dark, evocative, hard-hitting film-making, though it probably helped that Neds is leavened by flashes of sly wit, a great eye for period detail and a sound ear for authentic dialogue.
Telling the story of a bright working-class kid whose dreams of bettering himself via education are gradually eroded as he gets sucked into the gang culture that has already consumed his elder brother, Mullan gives a familiar story arc a new lease of life thanks to a driving narrative fuelled by a controlled anger that never becomes didactic.
As his protagonist John McGill gets pulled into a violent vortex, the film neither judges nor glamorises this world. Instead Mullan juxtaposes the grittiness of the subject matter with surprisingly lush cinematography and surreal, Abel Ferrara-esque flights of fancy that help underscore the complexities of a system that casually throws people into the lion's den – an idea Mullan makes amusingly literal in the film's wonderfully audacious final scene.