A Forgotten 2011 Jason Statham Action Movie Is Climbing Netflix's Top Charts

In a sense, Netflix really is the new Blockbuster Video (or Hollywood Video or whatever rental chain my fellow old people preferred to frequent). Once you marched past the rows stacked with endless copies of the latest release at your local Blockbuster, you could uncover films and TV shows that either flew under the radar or were deemed too scandalous for mainstream tastes. (Stumbling upon and being mildly traumatized by the grotesque cover artwork for horror B-movies was practically a rite of passage for folks of a certain age.) You don't get anywhere near the same range of choices on Netflix — especially now that its library is increasingly composed of the service's originals — but it does similarly allow certain older, somewhat forgotten titles to gain a new lease on life, however fleeting it may be.

Admittedly, it's easier to understand why certain movies or series abruptly crack Netflix's daily top 10 when they do than it is with others. With Denzel Washington about to make a trip to the arena for next month's "Gladiator II," is it any surprise the streamer's subscribers are suddenly in the mood to revisit the Hollywood icon's previous offerings (even a film as middle-of-the-road as his team up with Mark Wahlberg on "2 Guns")? Alternatively, it's difficult to suss out exactly why the distinctly '00s crime thriller series "Prison Break" has popped on Netflix's top charts the way it has this year, other than its inherent bingeableness. (Call it the "Suits" effect.)

As for why the Jason Statham-led 2011 action-thriller "The Mechanic" has became one of the most-watched titles on Netflix for nearly a week straight now? Based on my extremely unscientific earlier studies on the subject, my hypothesis is that it's simply the sort of movie that tends to play well to the streaming masses.

Look, I get it: At the end of a long day, the last thing people want to do (and fairly so) is comb through endless rows of Netflix titles in the fleeting hopes of finding a film or show that actually seems worthwhile. It's not, per se, about picking something that's undemanding either; they just want a safe bet. Enter Jason Statham, one of the safest bets around. Are all his movies equally good? Definitely not, but the man knows what the masses expect from him (growling pulpy lines of dialogue and lots of butt-kicking) and he's more than happy to oblige them.

It's no wonder, then, that "The Mechanic" has managed to hang around in Netflix's daily top 10 in the U.S. since it jumped up to the number five spot on October 4, 2024 (via FlixPatrol). Admittedly, it fell to ninth place by October 9 and may have already dropped to the number 10 spot by the time you read this, but a week-long run atop Netflix out of the blue is nothing to shrug off — not least of all for a genre film that came and went without making much of a ruckus when CBS Films shipped it off to theaters in the dumping grounds of January 2011. CBS Films itself quietly went defunct five years ago but it had a decent run, distributing the likes of "The Woman in Black," "Inside Llewyn Davis," "Hell or High Water," and "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" along the way.

"The Mechanic," meanwhile, is fairly stock material for its leading man. The Stath plays the titular character here, a protagonist who's about as quintessential Jason Statham material as they come — as in, he's a principled assassin who sets out on a personal mission of revenge after his mentor is killed. The film itself is a remake of the 1972 movie of the same name starring Charles Bronson (the Statham of his time, perhaps) and hales from "Con Air" and "The Expendables 2" director Simon West, so its 53 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes shouldn't come as a huge shock. Still, the presence of the late, great Donald Sutherland and the sadly-under-appreciated Ben Foster as Statham's mentor and the son of his mentor, respectively, does its part to elevate the proceedings.