Utterly ridiculous, highly entertaining nonsense.

Levon Cade (Jason Statham) works construction for Joe Gracia (Michael Peña), taking care of problems on the job site… and occasionally interference from outside of it. He saves every penny to pay lawyers fighting against his rich father-in-law trying to rip custody of his daughter Merry (Isla Gie) away since his wife passed, citing Levon as unfit to be a single father. When Joe’s daughter Jenny (Arianna Rivas) goes missing, he begs Levon for help, a task that can only be fulfilled using the skills of his previous career as a counter-terrorism operative (Oh noes! Who knew?!) Risking custody of his daughter and possibly his freedom, Levon agrees… going up against a Russian syndicate infamous for eradicating entire bloodlines of their known enemies.

American comics writer Chuck Dixon created the Levon Cade series of pulp “Vigilante Justice Thriller” novels prior to Sylvester Stallone and director David Ayer banging out a screenplay for this on-brand Jason Statham vehicle. It’s presumably the first of many, with a dozen novels already to draw upon and a thirteenth on the way. Ayers and Statham most recently collaborated on the surprisingly successful The Beekeeper, which itself was left wide open for a sequel. Focusing on smaller-budgeted maximum bang for your buck movies, studios have discovered you don’t have to spend The Meg money to scratch that action hero itch or attach a CGI cape to their shoulders. The big question is, are audiences up for another round of Statham escapism in the vein of John Wick and Nobody?

After the initial setup, the second act is frustrating, with Statham splitting his time between torturing bad guys for information and simultaneously posing as a drug dealer to gain criminal access. Starting almost three days after the abduction (true crime fanatics know about “the first 72 hours”), it’s one hell of an assumption that every local criminal must somehow be connected to this one crime, assuming the victim isn’t already dead or in another country. Perhaps the original story details were sacrificed, providing our hero a single line of breadcrumbs to slingshot viewers into the third-act one-man battalion stuff Statham gets hired for and audiences pay to see. In spite of implausible field work and scripted lucky breaks, the film feels like a throwback to late 1980s, early 1990s action flicks, letting Statham do his gruff vendetta routine while stunt guys get yanked away and set on fire. It’s fun and it looks great, so what’s not to enjoy?

Traditional damsels in distress have long since been overtaken by modern self-rescuing princesses in cinema, but A Working Man compromises with a semi-self-rescuing damsel, looking for and taking opportunities to slow the bad guys down just enough for our hero to catch up. At the same time, filmmakers equally wink at the audience, dressing up Russian syndicate members like Addams Family cosplayers with the shooting skills of Imperial Stormtroopers. There’s also plenty of petty revenge and clever comeuppance to keep audiences smiling. The best of the bad guys includes Andrej Kaminsky’s vengeance-swearing Symon Kharchenko, Eve Mauro’s scrappy Artemis, Ricky Champ’s “Uncle Fester” cosplay Nestor, and Chidi Ajufo’s over-the-top gun-lord Dutch. It rang a bit hollow having David Harbour doing so little as Levon’s war buddy Gunny, left as a seed sown to reap later if the series continues.

It’s not quite as good as The Beekeeper taking down internet fraudsters who scam retirees masquerading as too-big-to-fail business conglomerates. Fortunately, “Levon Cade: The Adventure Begins” is just as apt a title as anything else, and it’s been forever since we last heard from Remo Williams.

A Working Man is rated R for strong violence, language throughout, drug content, and believing your oversized Ram pickup would go unnoticed behind a tiny hedge twenty feet from a rowdy biker bar.

Three skull recommendation out of four.