If You Like Jason Statham's A Working Man, You'll Love His Hidden Gem Action Movie From 2013

Viewers who enjoyed A Working Man should also check out Jason Statham in 2013 action gem Homefront. After working with him on The Expendables franchise, Statham has become firm friends with Sylvester Stallone. It's possible Stallone saw the British star as a successor to his action crown, as he has developed several projects for Statham outside of The Expendables. Stallone co-wrote and produced A Working Man for Statham in 2025, a box office hit that adapted the novel Levon's Trade.

There is hope that A Working Man could become another Stallone originally developed Homefront as a potential fourth Rambo, and this 2013 thriller cast Statham as a retired DEA agent living peacefully with his daughter - until he makes an enemy of a local meth dealer. Punching, kicking and gunfire soon follow.

Homefront & A Working Man Have A Fair Amount In Common

Homefront is practically a prequel to A Working Man

A collage of Jason Statham as Levon in A Working Man — Custom image by Yailin Chacon

A Working Man and Homefront feel quite similar on a surface level, and those comparisons only run deeper upon further inspection. Both movies are based on long-running thriller series, with A Working Man adapting the Levon Cade books by Chuck Dixon, while Homefront brings author Chuck Logan's Phil Broker novels to life. In both instances, Stallone acquired the rights to these novels to develop for himself, only to rework them as vehicles for Statham.

A Working Man and Homefront also cast Statham as a widowed father whose violent past catches up to him as he is trying to raise a young daughter. A key difference is that Homefront makes Broker's relationship with his daughter a major subplot, while Levon's daughter doesn't get much screentime in A Working Man. Homefront is the more grounded of the two, with A Working Man's action becoming more outlandish and over the top as the story progresses.

Sylvester Stallone ultimately rejected Homefront as a potential Rambo 4 because he felt the character wasn't ready to return to America yet. Sly also had trouble accepting that Rambo would have a child.

Both movies laid the foundation to become new franchises, though the muted response Homefront received meant a sequel didn't follow. There are plenty of other Levon Cade novels a future sequel could adapt, though A Working Man also received a mixed response (it sits at 49% on Rotten Tomatoes). Audiences hoped for another action thriller on par with Statham and director David Ayer's previous collaboration, The Beekeeper, but their new film lacked the same skillful blend of action and dark comedy.

A Working Man & Homefront Are Both Written By Sylvester Stallone

Stallone's penmanship is all over these two Jason Statham action films

Stallone is obviously best known as an action star, but fans might be shocked to learn how many films he's written. Stallone is credited as a writer on 25 movies, including most of the Rocky and Rambo sagas and his Saturday Night Fever sequel, Staying Alive. He even penned the novelizations for some of his movies, including Paradise Alley. Even on films where he's not credited, Stallone is said to have had a hand in their screenplays, but Homefront and A Working Man mark the rare times that Sly wrote a script he didn't star in.

Sylvester Stallone also knows how to write to Statham's strengths as an actor, so while he plenty of people to punch, both scripts show off the star's more emotional side...

Stallone's gift for combining action and characterization - not to mention memorable one-liners - is all over both projects. That might be why Homefront could attract such a solid cast, including Winona Ryder, Frank Grillo and Kate Bosworth. The advantage of adapting a book is that a screenwriter already has a story foundation and fleshed-out characters to work with, even if a lot of details end up being changed. A Working Man is quite different in tone from Levon's Trade, for instance.

Broadly speaking, the plot is familiar and many of the same characters appear, but Stallone has punched up the action considerably. If Levon's Trade reads like a dark vigilante thriller from the 1970s, A Working Man is closer in feel to The Beekeeper. Stallone also knows how to write to Statham's strengths as an actor, so while he gets plenty of people to punch, both scripts show off the star's more emotional side, too.

Source: Rotten Tomatoes