The Fast & Furious star Jason Statham, known for playing the villainous Deckard Shaw, has taken many lead roles as the ultimate intimidating tough guy. From the recent movie The Beekeeper to the classic Expendables franchise, Statham is the image of an anti-hero to many. Fans who are familiar with Statham’s catalog know that starring as the lead in R-rated action thrillers is right up the actor’s alley, and one film had its trailer banned in the UK after its screening due to having “a stream of violent imagery.”
Statham starred as the morally questionable anti-hero Arthur Bishop, who is a highly skilled assassin in The Mechanic. The film has played an important role in his career — Bishop was one of the first lead action roles Statham took in a movie with franchise potential. Directed by Simon West, the action thriller The Mechanic takes a deep dive into the world of assassins through the eyes of Bishop, who never mixes business with personal affairs. However, things are bound to change when he’s ordered to kill his mentor.
What Is the Mechanic About?
Revolving around the business of killing, The Mechanic takes a modern approach to the remake of the 1972 classic action thriller of the same name. The film follows Arthur Bishop, an assassin known as “the Mechanic,” whose genius lies in styling his “hits” to look like accidents or suicides. After completing an assignment to kill his mentor, Harry McKenna, played by The Hunger Games actor Donald Sutherland, Bishop takes on the responsibility of training Harry’s son, Steve McKenna (Ben Foster). While they form a bond over their mutual love and talent for subtle murder, Bishop begins to realize that his employer, Dean (Tony Goldwyn), has tricked him into killing Harry to cover his own shady actions.
Dean orders the hits on both Bishop and Steve, but both hits fall through. Steve realizes that his mentor is the hitman behind his father’s murder and plots his revenge by blowing up Bishop’s truck with Bishop seemingly inside and stealing his car. After surviving the explosion, Bishop makes an attempt on Steve’s life. Learned from the best, his student also manages to escape the hit.
The Mechanic’s Trailer Was Banned Due to “a Stream of Violent Imagery”
When Lionsgate released the restricted trailer for the film in the United Kingdom in 2011, it was banned during its initial airing. Despite the trailer being screened after the 9 p.m. “watershed” in England, a time when mature content is allowed to be shown on television, the Advertising Standards Agency received 13 distressful complaints reporting the commercial to be offensive and upsetting and eventually ruled to have the trailer banned from the country.
Trailers that feature explicit content are not uncommon for R-rated movies, especially for a film about killers. However, in recent years, action thrillers from Lionsgate have been using more clean footage without spilling explicit scenes to the viewers. In the case of The Mechanic, where it takes a deep, hard dive into the brutal underworld of assassins, violence is expected. However, the film does have two trailers — the official trailer is the clean version that doesn’t include any explicit scenes; the restricted trailer, on the other hand, is graphic and gritty in nature. The official trailer was never banned in the UK, only the restricted one. Even with explicit imagery, the rating seems appropriate, given that the 15 rating is the UK equivalence for the R rating in the U.S.
It turns out that the trailer was banned for a particular reason. Interestingly, it wouldn’t have received the same treatment if it had been played in between anything close to its genre; for example, The Walking Dead. However, instead of being put between more mature shows, the trailer was screened in between episodes of the TV-14 show Glee, where most of the viewers were under the age of 16. Because Glee’s viewers consist of a large number of teens, who were then exposed to gory imagery in The Mechanic’s restricted trailer, the ASA decided to ban the advertisement in the country.
“We considered that the ad was inappropriate for children and were therefore also concerned that a significant portion of children had been exposed to the violent imagery.”
In response to the news, Lionsgate commented that due to the explicit nature of the film, it was unavoidable that sensitive members of the public would find the trailer distressing.
The Mechanic Restricted Trailer Breakdown
The Mechanic’s official trailer focuses more on the storytelling aspect of the film and doesn’t include many gory scenes. The restricted trailer, on the other hand, lies thick on the rated-R portion of the film. The restricted trailer has most of the film’s gruesome deaths and features much more explicit footage. Opening with the beginning scenes of the film, the caption reads, “The most powerful criminals believe they’re untouchable. They are dead wrong.” The trailer follows The Beekeeper star’s titular character as he walks into a man’s mansion and drowns his target in the swimming pool to make it look like an accident.
Bishop’s professional life is soon joined by another, Steve, his mentor’s son, whom Bishop begins to train to become a “Mechanic” like him. Unlike Bishop, Steve is reckless and relentless. The trailer follows the killers’ journey as they leave a trail of bodies, featuring brutal scenes in which a man’s head explodes when being shot at close range, a car runs over a man’s head, a man’s hand is broken, a metal bar being driven through a car’s window into a man’s head and not to mention, two explicit sex scenes that contain nudity.
How The Mechanic’s 15 Rating Conflicts With Glee TV-14
Though the R rating from the MPA in the U.S. generally translates to the BBFC 15 rating (which can also be a hard TV-14 or a soft TV-MA) in the UK, in the case of The Mechanic restricted trailer, it collides with Glee’s soft TV-14. Glee is an American musical sitcom set in a high school, in which a club of talented students find their voices and deal with the harsh realities of life. While the show involves sexual scenes, swearing, substance use and violence, it’s no match for the amount of explicit violence in The Mechanic.
According to 199 parent reviews on Common Sense Media, the majority of parents agree that they would allow kids aged 13 and up to watch Glee, and according to 730 kids who left a review on the website, most deem the TV show appropriate for 12 years old and up. It’s not surprising that the screening of The Mechanic’s restricted trailer, which consists of densely paced, explicitly violent scenes, would receive complaints.
The Mechanic’s Significance to Jason Statham’s Career
Inspired by his past working as a black market salesman, Jason Statham came to the public eye in Guy Ritchie’s 1998 crime film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and the 2000 film Snatch. He went on to star in a handful of action thrillers, which became what he is known for as an actor, before landing the antagonist role of Deckard Shaw in the Fast & Furious franchise. The Mechanic is one of the first action films Jason Statham took on in his early acting career. Due to the lack of funds and having trained in martial arts, Statham did most of his own stunts in the film.
Even though The Mechanic is not a blockbuster, the film achieved significant commercial success in 2011. Statham played a tough, skilled and charismatic assassin with a dangerous edge, which solidifies Statham’s image as a lead action star — an image that has been central to his career. Statham then starred in the sequel, The Mechanic: Resurrection. Though the second installment wasn’t as successful as the first one, the franchise further pushed Statham into stardom, securing his reputation as one of the hottest action thriller stars in Hollywood.
Jason Statham is set to lead in a new unknown action thriller directed by Baltasar Kormakur. The title of the film is currently unknown, but the film is being produced by Black Bear. Statham’s character, Mason, lives in solitude on a remote island in Scotland. His life is disrupted when he saves a girl from the ocean during a storm and thus is forced to face his past. Statham is set to produce the film alongside Baltasar and other experienced producers.