The Mechanic Sales Trailer

Jason Statham is starring in director Simon West's remake of the Charles Bronson thriller The Mechanic. He's got Ben Foster along for the ride, presumably taking over the role played by Jan-Michael Vincent in the original, and Donald Sutherland as well. Now there's a sales trailer to show off what West is doing with the story of a killer (Statham) who takes on an apprentice (Foster). Check it out after the break. (Note that due to some brief skin, it is probably NSFW)

There's a good bit of Ben Foster in this trailer, which makes me really happy. But this footage looks a lot like television; if it weren't for some of the faces glimpsed within I might even mistake the first half of the teaser for a show that could've aired on cable a decade ago.

It does pick up the pace in the second half, when the more explosive side of Simon West's personality takes over. There's certainly a lot of shooting and exploding. I wonder how this version is going to stack up against the original, which had a sort of laconic, detached tone. The original also opened with an extended dialogue-free sequence in which Bronson set up a hit, and I wonder if West has recreated that here.

Note that this is a sales trailer, rather than a teaser or final theatrical trailer. It is meant for distributors, rather than audiences. The film doesn't yet have distribution, and consequently there is no release date or timeframe for a real theatrical trailer. As is often the case with sales trailers, the quality here is a bit low, which doesn't help minimize the whole TV-ish aesthetic.

Here's the trailer, which you can also see at Ace Showbiz:

And here's the trailer for the Charles Bronson version: