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The Mechanic | 2011 | R | - 7.8.6

A remake of the eponymous 1972 Charles Bronson film: Jason Statham plays an elite professional assassin, who decides to take on an apprentice (Ben Foster). The younger man's father had been assassinated and he has problems with substance abuse, which threaten their relationship. Also with Tony Goldwyn, Donald Sutherland, Mini Anden and Jeff Chase. Directed by Simon West. [1:40]

SEX/NUDITY 7 - A man and a woman have sex: the woman straddles the man (her bare back and the side profile of her bare breast is visible, as well as a portion of her buttocks), they change position, the man is seen thrusting on top of the woman and she is heard moaning; the woman gets out of bed and we see her bare buttocks, back, and side profile of a portion of her bare breast.
 A man pushes a woman's back against a wall in an alley and they kiss passionately; the man thrusts and it is implied that they are having sex, they change position, the man shoves the woman around roughly and we hear her moaning (no nudity is visible and they walk away afterward).
 We see two nude women (visible from waist-up) on a computer screen rub their hands over one another (their bare breasts are visible); one of them places her mouth on the breast of the other while they moan loudly, and a man places the computer in front of a deceased person as another man remarks that it is "autoerotic asphyxiation."
 A man seductively rubs another man's neck and sits him down on a bed, unbuttons the other man's shirt, the other man touches the man's chest, unbuttons his shirt, takes off the man's belt and opens his pants; the man then sits in front of the other man, who places his face very close to the other man's neck. A man asks another man on a date; we see them together and the man places his hand on the other man's back.
 A woman approaches a man, asks him to dance and then suggestively dances, shaking her hips, in front of him; the man gets up and follows her. We see men and women dancing very closely together.
 A man jokes that he wants to "kill the guy, not rape him" when another man gives him a drug (roofies) and tells him to give it to the man to immobilize him. A man gives a woman money after they have had sex, implying that she is a prostitute.
 A man is seen shirtless (his bare back and chest are visible), wearing swim trunks as he swims. A man's bare chest and torso are seen as he takes off a scuba suit. A man is seen wearing boxer shorts and a T-shirt. A woman is seen wearing a tank top and underwear. A woman is seen wearing an open shirt (no breasts are visible) and underwear after having had sex with a man.

VIOLENCE/GORE 8 - Using a belt, a man tries to choke another man, the man resists and throws the other man to the ground: they wrestle, one man slams the other against a wall (we see a small bloody cut on one man's face), one man slams the other man into a refrigerator (a massive dent is left in the door), one man slams a door and smashes the other man's face into a table, one man is thrown into a bookcase, one man stabs the other man in the torso twice with a screwdriver (we see blood on the man's face and shirt), one man is stabbed repeatedly with a fireplace poker until he is on the ground (blood sprays as the man with the fireplace poker uses it to hit the other man repeatedly) and both men are shown bleeding from multiple cuts on their faces and one man's torso is covered in blood (we understand that one of the men died).
 A massive firefight begins after a man is shot point-blank in the face: they shoot at each other while running through hallways and onto the rooftop of a building; one man shoots three different men in the head (with each one we see blood flying from his head and his body dropping to the ground), a man is thrown off the roof of the building (the man's body is seen hitting the ground as a "splat" is heard), and another man is shot in the back (we see blood pouring from the wound).
 A man runs a garbage truck into a car, spearing the car (one of the spears goes through the driver, killing him and blood splatters the passenger), and the car is lifted above the garbage truck and dropped onto the ground, upside down; the passenger, splattered in blood, attempts to crawl out of the car as two men approach with machine guns and open fire, shooting him over two dozen times (blood sprays).
 A man on a bus lunges at another man with a sharpened piece of metal, the two men wrestle, slamming each other against the walls of the bus, one man pulls a pin from a fire extinguisher and stabs the other man in the face (we see the pin sticking out of the man's cheek with blood pouring from the wound), one man throws the other through a bus window, glass shatters and a car races by and runs over the man (we hear a thud and see blood spray up on the car's grill and headlights).
 A man shoots another man in the leg (he shouts in pain and we see a wet red spot on his trousers); a woman and a teenage girl help him, two men grab them and hold guns to their heads, one man holds the teenage girl's hand over an in-sink garbage disposal, the woman shouts, the man turns on the disposal and we see blood and chunks of tissue fly through the air (he turns off the disposal, holds up the teenage girl's hand, which is unharmed, and throws a piece of butcher meat on a counter).
 A man stabs a man in the knee and shoots another man, who falls into water (we see the water around the man turning red and his eyes are vacant); the man then shoots the other man with the spear in his knee.
 A man is seen with a gun held to his head while two other men watch; the man grabs a gun and quickly shoots the three men (we see their bodies hit the ground and later see one of their dead bodies on the floor, with blood pooled around).
 A man in a wheelchair shoots three holes into a van and hands another man his gun; the man shoots the man in the wheelchair in the chest (we see blood come from the bullet wound) and the force of the shot sends the man rolling backward.
 A man chokes another man with a rope wrapped around his neck as another man watches; the dead man is then propped up against a wall with a rope around his neck while another man says that the man is setting a scene for autoerotic asphyxiation. A man experiences seeing a man choke another man as a flashback.
 Two men shove a small scope camera down another man's throat, he struggles slightly, and is then seen lifeless.
 A man swimming in a pool is grabbed by another person in a full scuba suit; he is held underwater, he struggles, his body goes limp and is discovered by several people (we hear a woman scream), one of whom pulls him out of the pool and tries to revive him with no success.
 A man approaches another man in a car, holds a gun to his head and demands that he give him the car; the man in the car grabs the man's arm and slams him against the door of the car, gets out, kicks the other man in the face and torso repeatedly (we see blood coming from the man's mouth and his eyes are swollen and bloody), holds his gun to his head, and a third man grabs the gun and helps the injured man up (we see him limp away, covered in blood). A man is slammed in the face with a machine gun, and he falls to the ground as a group of men holding rifles circle him.
 A man rams a car, full-speed, into an SUV; the SUV crashes into a delivery truck and then another SUV (we see the windshield on the SUV shatter, and a large splash of blood is seen on the driver's side, implying the driver is dead). A man drives a bus, head-on, into an SUV; the SUV drives through the bus as the driver of the bus jumps through a window (we later see him, unharmed), and the SUV and bus explode in a massive fireball, presumably killing the driver of the SUV.
 A man driving a car reads a note that says, "If you are reading this you are already dead"; the car explodes and a nearby house also explodes, shrapnel flies through the air and the car is seen in a burning heap. A man covers a truck with gasoline and fires a bullet under the truck, which sparks a massive explosion, a fireball shoots into the sky, flames engulf the truck and surrounding cars and black smoke billows from the explosion (we later see the driver of the truck unharmed).
 We see a man's computer screen where five small photographs of men are displayed and the headline reads "Five Killed" (we see a small amount of blood in two of the photographs). We briefly see a newspaper photograph of a person's back: a small portion of the person's buttocks is visible, he's missing a leg, blood and tissue are seen hanging from the hip and the title states, "Shark Attack"; a man looking at the photograph explains that there are multiple ways for a person to die. We see a photograph of a man with blood on his face and pooling behind his head. A man with a black eye and multiple healing cuts on his face is seen in a bar and a woman tells him that she would like someone to "hurt her like that."
 A man in a scuba suit makes a dead body pantomime swimming as another man looks down on the pool.
 Two men rappel down a high rise building as a man fires a gun at them, one of the men kicks a glass window, and they jump through the opening. A man holding a gun boards a bus, yanks another man out of the bus and shouts at two female passengers until they get off, unharmed. A man leaps from a bridge into a river and grabs onto a boat, unharmed.
 A man instructs another man to kill the person responsible for the death of five men, saying not to make him suffer unnecessarily. A man is threatened to be kill during a telephone conversation, he hangs up and shouts that he is going to be killed and needs protection; we see many men holding rifles surround him. A man in a wheelchair struggles down a flight of stairs after being told that people are trying to kill him, (he escapes unharmed).
 Two men discuss murder for hire in many scenes: they discuss how they will use a drug to stop a man's heart and that if the drug does not work the counter drug given by paramedics will kill him, they discuss how a man's father had been killed, a man asks another man if he has ever regretted killing the large number of people he has killed and he replies that he has no remorse, a man tells another man that he thought he had been killed after he saw a photograph of him with a bullet hole in his head, and a man says that he had been paid to kill four men and fake his own death. A man's voice is heard describing how he is paid to kill people, and that his job is to make it appear as though no one was there. A man tells another man that he is planning on killing people at random, hoping that he kills the person that murdered his father. A man tells another man that the body of a teenage girl had been discovered two weeks after a man killed her; the man then mentions that the girl had an abortion after telling people that she was pregnant with the man's child. A man says that another man's mother had died when he was a child from an overdose of drugs and alcohol and that the man had then started a life of crime, including being in a bar fight that broke his knee and being arrested three times for assault. A female television reporter is heard announcing that a man had died and that police were investigating the gunfire that took place after the man's death. We overhear a man shouting at an unseen teenage girl on the phone that she scared someone "half to death." A man says that a person had been an illegal arms dealer, selling guns to "gangbangers, cop killers and terrorists." A man jokingly tells another man that if he finds a Band-aid in his sandwich that it was because the clerk at the deli had Band-aids on all of his fingers. A man jokes that he wants to "kill the guy, not rape him" when another man gives him a drug ("roofies") and tells him to give it to a man to immobilize him.
 An inebriated man fires a gun at a mirror, lamp, and wall of a house, and he slams a lamp to the ground, shattering it. On multiple occasions we see two men firing large machine guns at targets.
 We see a small pile of dog feces on the ground and a man steps on it (we hear a squishing sound) and shouts at a dog. We see a taxidermy deer decorating a man's wall.

LANGUAGE 6 - About 17 F-words or its derivatives, 1 sexual reference, 13 scatological terms, 1 anatomical term, 3 mild obscenities, name-calling (snob, cartoons, stupid), 2 religious profanities, 4 religious exclamations.

SUBSTANCE USE - A man is seen hooked up to an IV of Ketamine, we hear someone remark that the man is "an addict," another man injects a syringe into the IV line and the man that's hooked up acts intoxicated, a man appears to roll a marijuana joint (it is not identified) and smoke it, and a man tells another man to give a drug ("roofies") to another man to immobilize him. Men are seen drinking alcohol throughout the movie, a man drinks excessively with multiple drinks in a row and then acts intoxicated on two occasions, a man drinks champagne, a man gives another man a bottle of alcohol, and a man jokes that the "booze fairy" paid him a visit. Throughout the movie a man is seen smoking cigarettes.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Revenge, murder for hire, disappointment, New Orleans, drug trafficking, death of a loved one, alcoholism.

MESSAGE - The job of a professional assassin is difficult, and finding people to trust is hard.

CAVEATS

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.


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