'The Mechanic' fixates on violence, tough-guy dialogue

If you took “The Mechanic” — an action-packed but superficial thriller — and combined it with George Clooney's “The American” — a stylistically nuanced, but boring drama — you might get a near-perfect movie about a professional assassin philosophizing about his lonely life while engaging in ultraviolent, bloody battles in every other scene.

Simon West's “The Mechanic,” a remake of a popular 1972 Charles Bronson crime drama, sputters along on the raw power of those graphically realistic action scenes and a plethora of howler tough-guy dialogue.

The best example: “I've put such a big price on your head,” Tony Goldwyn's chief bad guy says, “that when you look into a mirror, your reflection is going to want to shoot you in the face!”

“The Mechanic” refers to Arthur, a highly efficient hit man played by “Transporter” star Jason Statham.

He starts off the movie by drowning a well-guarded drug lord in his own swimming pool right under the guns of his guards. (By starting this way, the film conveniently skips over how Arthur circumvented the heavy security at the drug lord's compound.)

In a few quick scenes, we see that Arthur works for an international assassination group headed by the slithery Dean (Goldwyn), and that Harry McKenna (Donald Sutherland) has been Arthur's old friend and mentor.

One day, Arthur receives a shocking new assignment.

Yep. Harry.

Arthur contacts Dean to be sure it's not a mistake.

“Harry McKenna has poisoned the well and he must be removed!” Dean says.

That's not the hard part.

Arthur meets Harry's long-lost son Steve (Ben Foster) at Harry's grave site and takes the kid under his wing, training him to be an assassin.

You know, to give Harry's kid a career out of guilt.

Steve is grateful.

“I've always had this anger!” Steve tells Arthur. “And now I have a place to put it!”

Steve and Arthur spend a lot of time blasting targets to pieces with their machine guns and practicing assaults.

In the movie's primary violent showdown, Steve disregards Arthur's advice to poison an assignment. Steve wants to do it the manly way, and tries to strangle a gay, rival mechanic (pro football player Jeff Chase) built like a charging bulldozer.

This is the most wince-inducing part of “The Mechanic.” West stages a death-match struggle with such force and brutality that we feel every punch of a fist and stab of a screwdriver.

Both Steve and Arthur are filled with evil, but in this nihilistic world of amoral characters (cops and other sources of moral force don't exist here), they become the least of the worst, the best of the bad.

The question of Steve discovering how his estranged father really died eventually gets answered, in a sly and disturbing way that accentuates the movie's message that honor, nobility and fairness are qualities that can get a man killed.

“Good judgment comes from experience,” Arthur explains to Steve, “and experience comes from bad judgment.”

If the same thing is true for good movies as good judgment, then West — director of “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” and the 2006 remake of “When a Stranger Calls” — should be gathering up enough experience to create a really good movie pretty soon.

<b>“The Mechanic”</b>

★★

<b>Starring:</b> Jason Statham, Ben Foster, Donald Sutherland, Tony Goldwyn

<b>Directed by:</b> Simon West

<b>Other:</b> A CBS Pictures release. Rated R for language, nudity, sexual situations, extreme violence. 92 minutes.