Friday Review Roundup: Village Keeper and A Working Man Offer a Whole Lot of Meh

Village Keeper: First Feature May Leave You Wanting More

By Chris Knight

Rating: B

I wanted to like Village Keeper more than I did. A first feature from Canadian filmmaker Karen Chapman, it tells the moving story of several generations of family angst and trauma.

But something about its proportions felt a little off. There was a touch too much flashback, an excess of cutaway, and a slight oversupply of innuendo in the early going that made the big emotional climax feel like it hadn’t quite earned its emotional beats.

Call me a churl, but there you have it. And now that I have that out of the way, let me say how much I enjoyed the performances, especially Olunike Adeliyi. She plays Jean, frazzled mother of two teens, the three of them living with her own mom (Maxine Simpson) in a too-small apartment inside a crowded and dingy building in Toronto’s Lawrence Heights neighbourhood.

Violence is baked into Jean’s life. There are hints of a traumatic event that took her husband, and she worries about the part of town in which they now live, and not without reason as it turns out.

Her kids, each resilient in his or her own way, are nevertheless starting to be affected by their mother’s tightly wound psyche and hair-trigger nerves. She makes an appointment with a therapist for them, but the doctor suggests maybe it’s she who needs help first and foremost.

Chapman draws great performances from her cast, mostly professionals although Simpson is a first-timer. And the apartment functions as another character in the mix, its tiny rooms further sub-divided by sheets and beaded curtains, while a pile of boxes containing the remains of Jean’s husband’s life slumps against one wall like an unwanted guest.

In some ways (and this isn’t something I say about most movies), Village Keeper may suffer from its lack of running time. At just a shade over 80 minutes, it could have used more room to stretch and expand, telling us more about Jean’s job as a caregiver for an elderly man, or the circumstances that brought her mom to Canada. Or the daily lives of her kids.

The press notes say the film is based on Chapman’s 2019 short Measure, which was nine minutes long. An extra nine or more added to this one might have been a welcome addition.

Village Keeper. Directed by Karen Chapman. Starring Olunike Adeliyi and Maxine Simpson. In theatres March 28.

A Working Man: Too Many Crooks Spoil the Plot

By Thom Ernst

Rating: C+

Director David Ayer likely believes he has stumbled upon the perfect formula while working with action-hero heavyweight Jason Statham following the success of their 2024 hit, The Beekeeper.

To recreate that magic, Ayer teams up with Statham again in A Working Man, this time with Statham portraying a reformed hardcore militia henchman who reluctantly comes out of the pacifist closet when human traffickers kidnap his boss’ daughter, played, respectively, by Michael Peña and Arianna Rivas.

The story, which credits Sylvester Stallone — one of Trump’s (ahem) three newly appointed Ambassadors to Hollywood — as producer and co-writer. This must have seemed bulletproof in the pitch meeting.

It’s a no-brainer — an essential asset for enjoying this kind of film — to have Stratham’s one-man army snapping the neck and femurs of human traffickers who, along with pedophiles, reign as the newly appointed movie villains who were once the mainstay of white supremacists.

But A Working Man, despite conjuring up the same stoic charisma that makes Stratham so right for these roles, reinforces the theory that a bee only stings once.

Having Stallone’s name flash so prominently in the opening credits does throw expectations off their axis. It may not have caused such a visceral reaction a year ago but given Stallone’s guilt by association with the current administration’s aggressive deportation efforts, a story where the hero works for an immigrant family and defends Spanish-speaking co-workers seems questionable.

Adding to a paradox which I recognize to be purely circumstantial is an endless flow of Russian heavies. And I do mean endless.

A Working Man is layered with villains, featuring not just an army of henchmen, but myriad kingpins. Unlike Ayer’s The Beekeeper, which followed a successful formula, this film stumbles by overloading on antagonists.

Typically, action films benefit from a standout villain in an unexpected role. But with A Working Man, Ayer, along with Stallone and Chuck Dixon as co-screenwriters, dilutes the role of the villain so much and so often, that it becomes challenging to determine whom to harbour a grudge against and to what extent.

Stallone originally purchased the project, an adaptation from Dixon’s book Levon’s Trade, to be a television series which might account for the meandering trail of shadowy men (and a woman) through shadowy places.

Just as one crime lord is introduced, another more menacing crime lord steps in, making the previous one seem less threatening. Soon after accepting Dutch (Chidi Ajufo) perched on his gaudy Game of Thrones-inspired armchair as being top of the goon chain, along comes a Penguin-ish character if he were played by Dom Deluise. However, aside from muddling the plot, what’s lost in this stacked pyramid of crime bosses is a satisfying comeuppance.

A Working Man. Directed by David Ayers. Starring Jason Statham, Michael Peña, Arianna Rivas and Chidi Ajufo. In theatres March 28.