Scenografia: Sebastian T. Krawinkel e Antonello Rubino
Fotografia: Daniel Gottschalk
Montaggio: Ueli Christen, Michael J. Duthie e Todd E. Miller
Effetti Speciali: Kevin Chisnall (supervisore)
Makeup: Sarisa Sarnsirikul (supervisore); Vasit Suchitta; Paul Pattison (per Jason Bateman)
Casting: Raweeporn 'Non' Srimonju e Marianne Stanicheva
Scheda film aggiornata al:
04 Dicembre 2016
Sinossi:
In breve:
Arthur Bishop (Jason Statham) è tra i sicari piĂš richiesti al mondo: meticoloso, non sbaglia un colpo ed è specializzato nel far sembrare gli assassinii dei normali incidenti. Anche se uscito dal âbusinessâ Arthur sarĂ costretto a tornarci per unâultima missione: completare una serie di omicidi, uccidendo gli uomini piĂš pericolosi al mondo, senza che lâFBI si accorga che i colpi portano la sua inconfondibile âfirmaâ.
Synopsis:
Arthur Bishop thought he had put his murderous past behind him when his most formidable foe kidnaps the love of his life. Now he is forced to travel the globe to complete three impossible assassinations, and do what he does best, make them look like accidents.
Arthur Bishop, the master assassin who faked his death in hopes of putting that part of his ;life behind him, now lives a quiet life in Rio. But someone who knows who he is shows up and tells him, that if he wants to continue living this life, he will do three jobs for someone. Bishop tries to tell them he has the wrong man but they know who he is and if he won't do the job, they will take him but he gets away. He then goes to a resort in Thailand run by a friend, Mae, where he tries to find out who is looking for him. Later a woman named Gina shows up looking for medical assistance and Mae can't help but notice bruises all over her body. Mae deduces she's a battered woman and when Mae hears her being beaten, Mae asks Bishop to help her. He goes and kills the guy she's with. He kills the man and then sets fire to the boat he's on. But he sees that Gina has a photo of him. He deduces that they one who wants him, sent her. He confronts her and she admits that she works at a children's ...
Commento critico (a cura di Mike McCahill, The Guardian)
Jason Statham undersold as cut-price Bond. This humdrum sequel fails to match the precision of its predecessor, while denying Jason Statham the comic wings of his revelatory turn in last yearâs Spy
2011âs The Mechanic, a carefully calibrated remake of the Charles Bronson hitman thriller, was presented as a notable development in Jason Stathamâs transition from hired muscle to self-made leading man. This humdrum spot of repeat business ditches the definite article, and with it much of the precision and gravity. Formerly a meticulous one-off, Stathamâs Bishop now looks more like another cut-price Bond, obliged to assemble his own lethal weapons while drifting through exotic Pacific locales in a dreary opening travelogue. Matters pick up with the three hits Bishop undertakes to rescue bikini-clad aid worker Jessica Alba: thereâs an ingenious kill involving a rooftop pool, and itâs amusing watching Tommy Lee Jonesâs return to Under Siege styling as an eccentric
arms dealer. Weâre stuck with a nondescript Mr Big, however, and the perfunctory action climaxes with a submarine-base shootout that screams âdirect-to-DVDâ. The Stath, alas, is following orders throughout: given his revelatory comic turn in last yearâs Spy, he may yet return to material that allows him to raise smiles and smash heads, but this shrugging afterthought isnât it.
Secondo commento critico (a cura di Owen Gleiberman, www.variety.com)
Jason Statham stars in a down-and-dirty B-movie 'Mission: Impossible' that's as lean and mean and minimalist as he is.
âYouâre different!â So says an old colleague (Michelle Yeoh) who hasnât seen Arthur Bishop, the mission-improbable hitman in âMechanic: Resurrection,â for a long time. âOlder,â he replies, coming out and stating the obvious. In fact, Jason Statham doesnât merely look older than he did when he last played Arthur Bishop, in the 2011 thriller âThe Mechanic.â He looks leaner and meaner, more squinty with resolve, more brutally and methodically sociopathic. With his hair cropped closer than usual, Statham has become a total bullet-head, a human ice pick â a machine of death.
For a while now, Jason Statham has been the thinking manâs smart/dumb B-movie action star. His films, or at least a lot of them, swim around in the grindhouse muck of bloodsport and revenge, a genre that has spawned
such brooding blocks of wood as Steven Seagal and Chuck Norris. But Statham, unlike most action-pulp icons, is a genuine actor, with a darting intelligence and finesse. He has often been much better than the movies heâs in, and he has flirted with the A-list as well. Itâs seriously doubtful that an action star pushing 50 would be considered for the role of James Bond, but it would be fascinating to see what Statham could do with it.
The closest he has probably come is the character of Arthur Bishop, assassin for hire, whose signature is that he kills and makes it all look like an accident; itâs his way of leaving no traces. Five years ago, in âThe Mechanic,â Bishop trained a new protĂŠgĂŠ (played by Ben Foster), but the movie, loosely based on a 1972 Charles Bronson film, was ludicrous â a series of overwrought daredevil stunts and situations.
It was too much over-the-top action, with not enough (borderline) plausibility.
âMechanic: Resurrectionâ is the movie âThe Mechanicâ should have been â a bite-sized Bond film, or maybe a grittier homicidal knockoff of the âMission: Impossibleâ series, with a lone-wolf renegade as the entire team. Bishop, living undercover in Brazil, is hunted down by his boyhood frenemy, Craine (Sam Hazeldine), who orders him to perform three kills. He has no desire to do any of them, but Craine holds a trump card: Gina (Jessica Alba), whom Bishop has rescued and fallen for. He thought he was finished with murder-for-hire, but now he has to kill for love.
Itâs part of the filmâs compact efficiency that in scene after scene, Bishop carries off in about 20 minutes what Tom Cruise and company would spend an entire hour to plan. Thereâs a downside to that: In a great M:I adventure, like Brad Birdâs hypnotically
intense âMission: Impossible â Ghost Protocol,â the stakes were high, and when Cruise slithered around on the tallest skyscraper in Dubai, the effect was pure heart-in-the-throat, hands-clawing-the-seat poetic vertigo.
In âMechanic,â thereâs a scene thatâs a knockoff of that Dubai spider-walk, with Bishop using electronic suction cups to slither up to the penthouse swimming pool of a mining billionaire in Sydney. Bishop, unlike Cruiseâs Ethan Hunt, has no short circuits or slip-ups; heâs too manly for that. He swings around on his harness, then drills a hole in the poolâs glass bottom and inserts a tiny cone, which gets injected with fluid until it cracks the glass. (The villain falls right through.) Itâs as impeccable as a physics equation: The result is one kill (of a really, really bad guy), but the spirit is that of a heist thriller. It is all, in every sense, perfectly executed.
Everything else Bishop does is
just as pinpoint. His first target is an African warlord who has barricaded himself inside an Alcatraz-like prison fortress. Bishop gets himself arrested and placed in the prison, then arranges to save the warlordâs life as a way of getting invited to dinner. Itâs all staged, by director Dennis Gansel, with enough connect-the-dots ingenuity to spin you right past your disbelief â or, at least, to make an enjoyable wink at it. Then Tommy Lee Jones shows up, wearing the wardrobe of a Eurotrash playboy, as a weapons dealer with a circular lair that evokes the one in âOn Her Majestyâs Secret Service.â Jones phones in his performance but classes up the proceedings; at last, Statham can share scenes with an actor as quick as he is.
The relentless invincibility of the hero is part of what reduces an action film to pulp rather than art. But Jason Statham â or,
at least, the Jason Statham brand â has no more room for vulnerability than the hero of a combat videogame. Heâs all kick-ass all the time, and âMechanic: Resurrection,â having served up a soupçon of cleverness, wastes no time delivering the bullet-spraying, jaw-smashing goods. Even here, Statham draws on the inner heat of his intelligence. Heâs like a Bruce Lee of automatic-weapon fire, so awesomely quick in his decision-making â heâll use this gun, which then runs out of bullets, necessitating this head-butt, which leads, inevitably, to this lightning-fast roll behind something that can shield him â that his split-second intensity lends everything that happens a kick of spontaneity. In âMechanic,â heâs a mechanic of murder, of escape, of ingenuity, of combat. Heâs too good (and too badass) to be true, but thatâs why we like him. It would be nice to see Statham make a movie one day thatâs
accomplished enough to raise his game. Until that happens, âMechanic: Resurrectionâ will do.
Bibliografia:
Nota: Si ringraziano Eagle Pictures e Gabriele Carunchio (presspress)