The Mechanic
Directed by	Simon West
Produced by	Irwin Winkler Robert Chartoff David Winkler William Chartoff
Screenplay by	Lewis John Carlino Richard Wenk
Story by	Lewis John Carlino
Narrated by	Jason Statham
Starring	Jason Statham Ben Foster
Music by	Mark Isham
Cinematography	Eric Schmidt
Editing by	T.G. Herrington Todd E. Miller
Distributed by	CBS Films (USA) Momentum Pictures Lionsgate (UK) Metropolitan Filmexport (France)
Release date(s)	January 28, 2011 (2011-01-28)
Running time	93 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$40 million[1]
Box office	$51,070,807[1]

The Mechanic is a 2011 American action thriller film starring Jason Statham as the title character. Directed by Simon West, it is a remake of the 1972 film of the same name, directed by Michael Winner and starring Charles Bronson and Jan-Michael Vincent. Statham stars as Arthur Bishop, a professional assassin who specializes in making his hits look like accidents, suicides or the acts of petty criminals.^[2] It was released in the United States and Canada on January 28, 2011.

Storyline [edit]

Arthur Bishop (Jason Statham) is a 'mechanic' - an elite assassin with a strict code and unique talent for cleanly eliminating targets. It's a job that requires professional perfection and total detachment, and Bishop is the best in the business. He is tricked into murdering his mentor and close friend Harry (Donald Sutherland), and, Bishop is anything but detached. His next assignment is self-imposed - he wants those responsible dead. His mission grows complicated when Harry's son Steve (Ben Foster) approaches him with the same vengeful goal and a determination to learn Bishop's trade. Bishop has always acted alone but he can't turn his back on Harry's son. A methodical hit man takes an impulsive student deep into his world and a deadly partnership is born. But while in pursuit of their ultimate mark, deceptions threaten to surface and those hired to fix problems become problems themselves.^[3]

Plot Synopsis [edit]

A plane lands at a private hangar, and the lone passenger makes his way to his mansion with an armed escort. When he goes to have a swim in his pool, he notices his watch at the bottom of the pool and retrieves it. A stranger suddenly grabs the swimmer and holds him under until he dies. The assassin, Arthur Bishop (Jason Statham), escapes in the ensuing chaos to a nearby river, where he jumps in and makes his getaway. Bishop later meets with his friend and mentor, Harry McKenna (Donald Sutherland), who pays Bishop for his work in Colombia. They discuss Harry's son, Steve (Ben Foster), before parting ways.

At his house, Bishop checks for his new contract only to find that he is to kill Harry. Bishop's employer confirms by phone that the contract is correct, whereupon Bishop requests a face-to-face meeting. Dean (Tony Goldwyn) tells Bishop about a failed mission in South Africa, in which assassins of Bishop's agency were killed. Dean relates that only two people knew about the mission—himself and Harry—and that Harry had been paid for the contract details. Bishop reluctantly kills Harry with his own gun and makes it look like a carjacking. The handgun is inscribed on one side with the Latin quotation, "amat victoria curam" and on the other side with the English translation, "victory loves preparation." At his funeral, Bishop meets Steve, who tells Bishop that he's going to kill any carjacker as revenge. Bishop secretly follows Steve and interrupts him before he carries out his plan. Bishop recognizes the raw potential of Steve and decides to train him as a "mechanic". He adopts a chihuahua and instructs Steve to take the dog with him to a coffee shop each day at the same time. As Steve settles in to his routine, Bishop escalates his training by taking him on a contract. Bishop strangles the man with a belt, stages it to look like an erotic asphyxiation accident, and shows Steve all the planning that went into that assassination.

Bishop informs Steve that he has a contract of his own. The target is a mechanic for another agency named Burke (Jeff Chase), who frequents the same coffee shop to which Steve has been taking the dog. Burke's only weaknesses are that he is interested in young men and small dogs. Burke makes his move on Steve and invites him out to drinks. Bishop instructs Steve to slip a large dose of Rohypnol into Burke's drink to cause an overdose. Steve ignores this direction and instead goes with Burke to his apartment. Burke begins to undress, and Steve attempts to strangle him with a belt as Bishop had done. Steve manages to kill Burke after much effort. Dean expresses his disapproval of Bishop's use of Steve for the Burke contract, but Bishop replies that he was given that contract through Harry and not Dean. Angry at his indignation, Dean informs Bishop that he's on a short leash.

Bishop is given a new contract to kill Andrew Vaughn (John McConnell), the leader of a cult-like church. Steve and Bishop plan to inject Vaughn with adrenaline to simulate a heart attack, for which the paramedics would unknowingly administer a fatal dose of epinephrine. While Bishop and Steve wait in the walls of Vaughn's hotel room, a doctor arrives and sets Vaughn up with an IV of ketamine. Realizing that the adrenaline overdose would be inhibited by the ketamine which would counteract the epinephrine, they improvise and quickly suffocate him. When Vaughn is found by his guards, Bishop and Steve are discovered and are forced into a shootout with the guards. Bishop and Steve slip out while the building is being evacuated, and Bishop decides they should fly home separately.

At the airport, Bishop sees one of the men he was told had been killed on the South African mission that Harry had allegedly sold out. Bishop realizes during a confrontation with the man that Dean had tricked him into killing Harry and that it had been Dean who engineered the failed mission to cover up his own shady dealings. Having been misled, Bishop begins to get things in order, only to be ambushed by a group of mechanics. After taking them out, he discovers that Dean was behind the hit. Bishop races home to call Steve, only to find that Steve has also been ambushed at Bishop's house. Bishop directs Steve to a hidden gun, which Steve uses to kill his ambushers. Bishop has Steve gather supplies for their new mission while he plots how to get to Dean. In the process Steve finds his father's gun and realizes that Bishop, not carjackers, had killed Harry.

Bishop and Steve work together to kill Dean. Afterwards, on the way to a fuel station, Bishop notices Harry's gun in Steve's jacket and realizes Steve has discovered the truth. Steve gets out to put fuel in the truck but adjusts the nozzle so it pours on the ground instead of in the tank. With Bishop still in the truck, Steve pulls out his father's gun and shoots the gas, blowing up Bishop's vehicle and the station with it. Steve returns to Bishop's house, and performs two actions that Bishop told him not to do: he plays a record on the turntable, then takes out of the garage the vintage 1966 Jaguar E-Type Bishop had been working on. As he is driving off, Steve notices a note on the passenger seat which reads: "Steve, if you're reading this then you're dead!" Steve laughs at the message, but, moments later, the car explodes, killing him (obviously). At the same time, the record player at Bishop's house finishes playing, activating a tripwire, which causes Bishop's house to also explode. In the grass after the explosion, the camera zooms in on Harry's handgun and the quotation "victory loves preparation." Back at the gas station, a security video reveals that Bishop had escaped from his truck moments before Steve blew it up. Unbeknownst to Steve before he blew the truck Bishop already jumped out and he only destroyed the station. Bishop gets in another truck he had by the beach and drives away.

Cast [edit]

Production [edit]

Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff, producers of the 1972 original Mechanic, sought to make an update. Pre-rights to the remake were sold in February 2009 at the Berlin Film Festival. (Variety reported that the screenplay was written by Karl Gajdusek.) Director Simon West and Jason Statham were announced as part of the project three months later.^[4] Ben Foster and Donald Sutherland were cast alongside Statham in October 2009.^[5] Filming began in New Orleans, Louisiana on October 14 and lasted for nine weeks.^[6] Filming locations included St. Tammany Parish,^[7] the World Trade Center in downtown New Orleans^[8] and the Algiers Seafood Market.^[9]

Music [edit]

The soundtrack music is by Mark Isham, with the exception of Franz Schubert's 1827 Trio No. 2 in E-flat major for piano, violin, and violoncello, D. 929, which is played when Bishop returns from a mission.

All songs written and composed by Mark Isham. 

Release [edit]

Theatrical run [edit]

The Mechanic was released in the United States and Canada on January 28, 2011. Millennium Films sold U.S. distribution rights to CBS Films for the release. It was expected to perform well with male audiences, with its release a week before Super Bowl XLV.^[10]

The film grossed $11.4 million on its opening weekend in the U.S. and Canada. To date it has grossed a total of $29.1 million in those countries and $16.7 million in other territories, for a worldwide total after a recount of over 51 million.^[1]

Critical reception [edit]

Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives The Mechanic a score of 53% based on reviews from 150 critics, and reports a rating average of 5.6 out of 10.^[11] At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film received an average score of 49% based on 35 reviews.^[12]

Roger Ebert awarded the film two out of four stars and said, "Audiences have been drilled to accept noise and movement as entertainment. It is done so well one almost forgets to ask why it has been done at all."^[13]

Sequel [edit]

In late 2012, a sequel was announced, and Statham is set to return as Arthur Bishop.

TV advertisement ban [edit]

On 1 June 2011, the BBC website confirmed that the TV advertisement for this film had been banned from television by the Advertising Watchdog.^[14]

The TV commercial was broadcast during the teen show Glee and received 13 viewer complaints. The advert reportedly showed "a man's head exploding" and showed a "stream of violent imagery" according to the Advertising Standards Authority.

References [edit]

External links [edit]

• Official website
• The Mechanic at AllRovi
• The Mechanic at the Internet Movie Database
• The Mechanic at Rotten Tomatoes

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