Why Jason Statham’s 'The Mechanic' Still Holds Up 15 Years On

On Jan. 28, 2011, Jason Statham’s action thriller The Mechanic premiered in North America; on its 15th anniversary MovieWeb senior writer Philip Etemesi published a piece arguing the Simon West-directed remake is “better than ever” (published Jan. 28, 2026). Etemesi notes the film began as an update from original producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff, with Richard Wenk (assisted by Lewis John Carlino) on script duties.

Made on a $40 million budget, the 93-minute film grossed $76 million and later spawned a sequel, The Mechanic: Resurrection, which the article says performed even better. The piece summarizes the premise: Statham’s Arthur Bishop—known as “The Mechanic”—is a hitman who makes murders look like accidents, suicides, or ordinary crimes.

As Bishop says in the intro, “The best jobs are the ones nobody even knows you were there.” Etemesi highlights a memorable kill that uses a bendable endoscope camera to suffocate a cult leader and deliver an unsettling point-of-view sequence. Complications come when Bishop is ordered to kill his mentor, Harry McKenna (Donald Sutherland), and then takes Harry’s son Steve McKenna (Ben Foster) under his wing, training him as an assassin.

Etemesi praises the mentor–protégé dynamic and Ben Foster’s performance, calling the duo an effective engine for the film’s tension.

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