There are very few certainties in the world right now, but Jason Statham and his assassin thriller The Mechanic making a regular appearance on streaming whenever it shifts to a new platform is one of them. Now on Paramount+, the British action man is in the Top 10 with his 2011 remake of Charles Bronson’s 1972 cult classic, as though everyone hasn’t seen it a thousand times – but what’s another round among Statham fans.
After almost 15 years since its release, Con Air director Simon West delivered a tight 93-minute action thriller that just seems to find a new audience wherever it appears in the streaming multi-platform-verse. Statham plays Arthur Bishop, a “mechanic” whose specialty is making hits look like accidents. After being taked with taking out his old mentor Harry (Donald Sutherland), Bishop takes Harry’s son Steve (Ben Foster) under his wing. This leads to the kind of story that has become Statham’s staple, with revenge, a moral twist, and plenty of frantic and brutal punch-ups and gun fights to keep action fans happy.
But it wouldn’t be a true Statham classic if it didn’t come with a divisive Rotten Tomatoes score, and it couldn’t be any more split. Critic reviews landed the film a 54% Tomatometer score, and audiences gave it a 51% rating. For anyone else, this could be a disappointing set of scores, but for fans, it just means that The Mechanic delivers the kind of action clichés that everyone loves, and that comes with a warm, cozy feeling of being spattered with blood from one of the many dead bad guys of which there are plenty.
The Mechanic was not a massive box office hit, earning $76.3 million from its $40 million budget, but it was enough to secure Statham an even more over-the-top (and more panned) sequel, which itself has become a frequent flier on the streaming charts.
Jason Statham Is an Unavoidable Presence on Streaming
There are obviously many different streaming options around these days, but wherever you scroll for your evening’s entertainment there is a good chance that you will pass an image of Statham’s grimacing face as he blasts his guns at someone off the edge of the picture.
While many of the actor’s older movies, including, on occasion, The Mechanic and its sequel, are regular performers on free streaming platforms such as Tubi, they still make waves when being added to other streamer’s libraries such as Netflix or Prime Video.
Just to prove a point, the last week has seen Statham take over the Prime Video chart with no less than three movies occupying spaces around the top end of the streamer’s most popular movies. This has included A Working Man and Wrath of Man at number one and two positions, respectively, while his huge hit, The Beekeeper has also been buzzing around the middle of the chart. In short, Jason Statham is like some kind of streaming catnip, and there is no way of avoiding his pull.
