As a general rule of thumb, successful movies designed with franchises in mind are the ones that tend to succeed in their goal of turning a substantial profit. As obvious as that sounds, it doesn’t quite explain how Jason Statham’s The Mechanic ended up getting a second installment half a decade later.
The remake of Charles Bronson’s 1972 thriller wasn’t exactly a flop – in fact, it performed pretty much in line with the majority of the chrome-domed action hero’s starring vehicles – but a grand total of $76 million at the box office on production costs of $40 million hardly made it a shoo-in to become the launchpad for a multi-film series.
And yet, not only did Mechanic: Resurrection emerge five years down the line in 2016, but it performed exponentially better than its predecessor. The return of Statham’s Arthur Bishop improved upon its predecessor’s earnings by a healthy $50 million, and there was one reason above all why it overachieved to such a surprising extent.
Almost 40 percent of Resurrection’s entire haul came solely from China, a luxury the original didn’t have, but it’s the first Mechanic that’s turning death into an artform on streaming this week, with FlixPatrol outing the fitfully enjoyable adventure as one of the top-viewed titles on the Starz most-watched rankings.
Statham’s expert assassin stages all of his jobs to look like unfortunate accidents, but when he takes Ben Foster’s protege under his wing after the murder of the latter’s father and former’s mentor, the duo soon find themselves caught up in a revenge-fueled mission that threatens to see them both exterminated for good.