Summary

Collider’s Steve Weintraub chats with A Working Man director David Ayer.

From a script co-written by Sylvester Stallone, A Working Man follows Jason Statham as Levon Cade, who will stop at nothing to rescue a girl who’s been kidnapped.

Ayer discusses Statham’s range and exploring new sides of his action hero persona, David Harbour’s pivotal role in the movie, and filming massive action set pieces.

Suicide Squad director David Ayer is reteaming with Jason Statham to bring audiences a whole new side of one of Hollywood’s biggest action heroes in the business today. Co-written with “action icon” Sylvester Stallone, Ayer leans into the family aspects of A Working Man, where Statham pulls no punches but is allowed to work in “lanes that haven’t been explored,” alongside David Harbour (Stranger Things), Michael Peña (Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan), and Arianna Rivas (Prom Dates).
Before the movie hits theaters, Collider’s Steve Weintraub spoke with Ayer about why the filmmaker was eager to join forces with Statham again after their collaboration on last year’s The Beekeeper and why Brad Pitt may have something to do with him sitting out on the sequel. Ayer also shares what he brought to Stallone and Chuck Dixon’s (Harley Quinn) original script, Harbour’s pivotal role in the movie, and what goes into massive action set pieces behind the scenes.
Brad Pitt’s ‘Heart of the Beast’ Is a “Classic Old-School Adventure”

The movie will also star J.K. Simmons.

Image via Sony Pictures Releasing

COLLIDER: Jason’s making a sequel to a Beekeeper. How are you not directing it?
DAVID AYER: [Laughs] My dance card, unfortunately, filled up.
Is it because of Brad Pitt?
AYER: Maybe.
What’s going on with Heart of the Beast? Are you shooting that this year?
AYER: Yeah. We’re going to camera shortly. I’m about to get back to Brad with another collaboration.
He is very hard to pin down. He gets offered literally every script in town. You’ve worked together on Fury and had a great collaboration, but was it hard to get him involved in this?
AYER: No, it actually came together really easily. To be honest, he was the first and only actor we went out to.

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I know it’s about someone trapped in the wilderness with his retired combat dog. What can you tell people about it?
AYER: All I can say is it’s just going to be a classic old-school adventure movie. This is what Hollywood excelled at for decades, and I want to bring that cinematic tradition back and just adventure storytelling.
Have you cast the dog?
AYER: The dog has been cast. The dog is the lead.
I can’t wait. I’m so happy you guys are teaming back up again.
‘A Working Man’ Shows a Whole New Side of Jason Statham

“When he has the opportunity to really connect with another actor in a scene, it’s magic.”

Jumping into why I get to talk to you. I love watching Jason beat people up. Obviously, the whole planet does, as well. What is it about Jason that everyone loves watching him punch people in the face?
AYER: I think it’s because we can connect with him as a regular person. He has that everyman quality. He could be your dad or uncle or neighbor, and because it’s somebody that we think we know, that we could know, avenging us or going after these despicable people, there’s something vicarious there. He becomes our protector and not just someone inside a movie screen.
What was it about this script that said, “I want to do this?” Because you just worked with Jason on Beekeeper.
AYER: I was really looking for another collaboration with him. I got [Sylvester] Stallone’s script, and it’s an action script by an action icon. Stallone is part of cinematic history, and so it was really intriguing. Then, the idea that I could take this script, add my layer, and really lead into the family component, it’s what I saw with Jason in Beekeeper. He’s a really good actor, and when he has the opportunity to really connect with another actor in a scene, it’s magic. So, I wanted to build a film around him where we could see him smile, where you can see him be part of the family, where we can see him be a dad. The bet was that if we see him in those spaces and can really feel that, it’ll make the action even more poignant and more powerful.
I’ve watched a lot of Jason Statham movies and he generally doesn’t connect with outside family. He’s a loner. Every once in a while, he has a daughter, you know what I mean?
AYER: Yeah, but that’s exactly it. When he’s surrounded by really powerful actors like Michael Peña and Arianna Rivas, who is just an incredible discovery, and David Harbour, he is indomitable. There’s something really interesting about him. In a lot of ways, I feel like he’s been underutilized. There’s so much room for him as a performer, so many lanes that haven’t been explored.
David Harbour is Jason Statham’s “Mentor and Buddy” in ‘A Working Man’

“I couldn’t imagine anybody else doing that part.”

Image via Amazon MGM Studios

Something that surprised me in a good way is, again, I’ve watched a lot of Jason movies, and I fully expected David Harbour’s character would be where the action goes in the third act. I’ve seen it before, and I’m like, “Wait, it’s not going to happen? I’m so shocked by this.” How much was there debate behind the scenes when you cast David Harbour of, “Do we want to give him that action set piece?”
AYER: I would love to give David the action set piece, but the role he signed up for is, really, he’s kind of the spirit animal of Jason, and the mentor and the buddy. He’s this man who’s gone through a lot of trauma and yet has found his own peace and becomes the model for Jason that Jason can also find some peace if he leans into his past and he leans into his family. David’s a brilliant actor, and I couldn’t imagine anybody else doing that part of the film.
You know I love talking about editing; I’ve talked to you about it 1,000 times. With this one, did it change a lot in the editing room? What did you learn from those early screenings?
AYER: I always say films are made in post. There’s a film you write, the film you shoot, the film you edit, and that’s where it really comes together. In this case, it came together pretty early. Our thing was always shaking time out because you put these things together, and it’s almost three hours, and that’s not good. So, we tested it, and not a lot of directors embrace testing like I do. The audience tells you what’s wrong with the film. They tell you what they’re not understanding, and it gives you an opportunity to really fix that. The testing helped us take the movie to the next level. They told us the problems we had and we figured out how to fix it, and it came together really well. I’m really proud of this one.

Can you specifically mention something that the audience taught you or informed you on that you then adjusted?
AYER: There are some repetitive things, where Jason didn’t feel like he was driving the action and driving the bus when he should have been. Then, there was some confusion towards the end of the film, which is exactly where you don’t want confusion. It’s hard to make these things—a script can read one way, you think you’re shooting it another way, and then the audience tells you what you actually have, and you have to listen. I think a good filmmaker knows how to listen to the audience.
I absolutely think the test screenings or friends and family screenings are incredibly beneficial. I’ve spoken to 1,000 directors, and they all say when you’re in post for a while, you sort of forget. You need fresh eyes to let you know what you have.
AYER: Yeah, because you know everything. You know the whole movie. You know the story, you know what you shot, you know what you didn’t shoot. The audience only knows exactly what you shot.
“It Was Relentless”: That Third Act Action Set Piece “Moves Like Fire”

“We didn’t have enough time to shoot it.”

Image via Amazon MGM Studios

I’m a fan of your action set pieces. You have a beast of a set piece in the third act on this one. Talk a little bit about shooting it because that’s not a simple two-day or one-day shoot.
AYER: No, we didn’t have enough time to shoot it. You never have enough time for these things. It was relentless. To the crew’s credit, everybody just powered through a lot of effects, a lot of camera work, a lot of elaborate setups, a lot of fighting, a lot of shooting and explosions. To do all that and do it fast and make it look good is just not easy. I’m really proud of how it came together. It just moves like fire.
There are a lot of people who watch these kinds of movies. What do you think would surprise them to learn about making a genre pic?
AYER: I think in this case, the amount of thought that goes into it. Because it’s a fun popcorn movie, it’s kind of breezy in its own way, but all the action, how to figure that out, all the choreo, all the long, long days with the action crew in sweats on the mat, experimenting, and then they video it, and then you cut the video together, and you learn, and you elaborate, and then Jason has to go in and learn all this choreography, and then you have to shoot the choreography. I’m operating the camera during a lot of this. I shot a lot of this action. Now, I’m seeing it through the eyepiece and how you adjust things live. In success, it just flows. It just feels easy, in a way. But it’s all that hidden work I think would surprise people.

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I’m just about out of time. I know you’re doing Heart of the Beast next. Do you have other scripts that you’ve been writing that you want to get made? Do you know what you’re going to do after that?
AYER: I might know what I’m doing after Heart of the Beast—I’m not at liberty. Then, I’m always a writer at heart. I’ve always been a storyteller and a voice of my originals, and that’s what I really want to get back to. So, I have a couple of ideas to really get back to my roots and take advantage of myself as a storyteller and as a writer.
A Working Man is now playing in theaters.