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Blue Valentine



The Mechanic

Take this as a recommendation or not, but the best thing about The Mechanic is that there’s nothing particularly wrong with it. Remade from a 1972 Charles Bronson movie directed by Michael Winner (the same team that hit pay dirt two years later with Death Wish), this action movie stars Jason Statham as a professional assassin of the kind that probably only exists in the movies: sleek, quiet, able to pick off his targets with minimal fuss. He of course only kills such scum as international drug lords, sexually perverse cult leaders, and competitors who lack his moral code (which is to say, targets who evoke no sympathy from us). Forced to bend his code somewhat by the shadowy organization he works for, his guilt leads him into taking on as an apprentice the dead man’s wastrel son (Ben Foster).



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