The Mechanic (2011 film)
The Mechanic is a 2011 American action thriller film directed by Simon West, starring Jason Statham and Ben Foster. Written by Lewis John Carlino and Richard Wenk, it is a remake of the 1972 film of the same name. Statham stars as Arthur Bishop, a professional assassin who specializes in making his hits look like accidents, suicides, or the acts of petty criminals. It was released in the U.S. and Canada on , 2011 to mixed reviews. A sequel, "", was released on August 26, 2016. Plot. Hitman Arthur Bishop sneaks into the home of a Colombian cartel  boss and drowns him in his own pool. Upon returning home to Louisiana, he meets with his friend and mentor Harry McKenna, who pays Bishop for his work. Bishop is then assigned to kill Harry; Bishop's employer Dean confirms by phone that the contract is correct, whereupon Bishop requests a face-to-face meeting. Dean tells him about a failed mission in South Africa, in which several assassins were killed. Dean reveals that only he and Harry knew the details of the mission, and that Harry had been paid for the contract details. Reluctantly, Bishop kills Harry with the  latter's own gun and makes it look like a carjacking. At the funeral, Bishop encounters Harry's son Steve, who he stops from trying to kill a would-be carjacker in a misguided attempt at vengeance. Following this, Steve asks Bishop to train him as a hitman. Adopting a chihuahua, he instructs Steve to take the dog with him to a coffee shop each day at the same time. As Steve settles into a routine, Bishop escalates their training, taking him to observe a contract killing. The target, Burke, frequents the coffee shop and eventually invites Steve out for  drinks. Bishop instructs Steve to slip a large dose of Rohypnol into Burke's drink to cause an overdose, but Steve ignores the instructions and goes with Burke to his apartment. When Burke begins to undress, Steve attempts to strangle him with a belt as he had seen Bishop do on a former assignment. Burke fights back, using his size advantage and experience, but Steve manages to kill Burke after a lengthy fight. Dean expresses his disapproval of Bishop's usage of Steve, which violated the rules of the contract arrangement. Bishop's next contract is to kill cult leader  Andrew Vaughn, whom he plans to inject with adrenaline to simulate a heart attack, for which the paramedics would administer a fatal dose of epinephrine. While Bishop and Steve are preparing for the hit, Vaughn's doctor arrives and administers an IV of ketamine, which would inhibit the adrenaline's effects. The two decide to suffocate him instead, but are discovered after killing Vaughn and are forced into a shootout with the guards. After the hit, Bishop and Steve fly home separately. At the airport, Bishop finds a supposed victim of the mission that Harry allegedly sold out. He confronts  the hitman, who tells Bishop that he was paid by Dean to kill the others in South Africa and fake his own death, so that Dean could engineer the failed mission to cover up his own shady dealings. He also reveals that Dean framed Harry and tricked Bishop into killing him. He then attempts to kill Bishop, who ultimately kills him in the ensuing struggle. Bishop is later ambushed by Dean's henchmen, and after killing them, he discovers that Dean was behind the hit. Bishop calls Steve, only to find that Steve has been ambushed. After Bishop helps Steve  to kill his attackers, he finds his father's gun and realizes that Bishop killed Harry. Bishop and Steve kill Dean in an ambush. When they stop for gas, Steve floods the ground with fuel while pretending to fill the tank before shooting the gas, blowing up the truck with Bishop seemingly still inside. Steve returns to Bishop's house and performs two actions that Bishop told him not to do: play a record on the turntable and take the 1966 Jaguar E-Type. As he drives away, Steve finds a note from Bishop that reads, "If you're reading  this, then you're dead." Realizing the car is rigged with a bomb, Steve gives one last laugh before the car explodes, killing him. Bishop's house is then destroyed by an explosion. Back at the gas station, a security video reveals that Bishop had escaped from the truck, seconds before the explosion. Bishop gets into a spare truck and drives away. Production. Development. 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.) Casting. Director Simon West and Jason Statham were announced as part of the project three months later. Ben Foster and Donald Sutherland were cast alongside Statham in October 2009. Filming. Filming began in New Orleans, Louisiana on and lasted for nine weeks. Filming locations included St. Tammany Parish, the World Trade Center in downtown New Orleans and the Algiers Seafood Market. Music. The soundtrack music is by Mark Isham, with two exceptions: Release. Theatrical. "The Mechanic" was released in the United States and Canada on , 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. In the United Kingdom, the distribution rights were sold to Lionsgate. TV advertisement ban. In June 2011 the UK's Advertising Standards Authority banned an advertisement for the film from being broadcast on British television. The ban followed complaints from 13 viewers regarding a screening of the advert during the teen show "Glee". In its ruling, the authority found that although the advert was shown post-watershed, it was likely that a large number of viewers under the age  of 16 would have been watching "Glee" at the time, and criticized the "stream of violent imagery" portrayed in the advert. Reception. Box office. The film grossed on its opening weekend in the U.S. and Canada. It ended with a North American gross of and in other territories, for a worldwide total of $76.3 million. Critical response. "The Mechanic" received mixed reviews from critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an approval rating of 53%, based on 156 reviews, with a rating average of 5.6/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Jason Statham and Ben Foster turn in  enjoyable performances, but this superficial remake betrays them with mind-numbing violence and action thriller cliches." On Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score to reviews from mainstream critics, the film received an average score of 49 out of 100, based on 35 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". 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." Sequel. Dennis Gansel directed a sequel, with Jason Statham returning as  Arthur Bishop.