The Mechanic: Resurrection Analysis

The Mechanic: Resurrection Dir. Dennis Gansel (2016)

Mechanic: Resurrection is a action thriller film directed by Dennis Gansel. The films production companies are; Chartoff-Winkler Productions, Davis-Films, Hurwitz Creative, ME2 Productions and Millennium Films. The budget for the film was $40 million and it grossed over $125 million at the box office worldwide. The film was distributed by Summit Entertainment, which is a subsidiary of Lionsgate.

The films director, Dennis Gansel, was born in Hanover, Germany in 1973. He grew up in East Berlin and started making films when he was 17. Gansel worked in the festivals for film and television and with disabled people. During this time, he prepared himself for film school. He studied at Munich Film School HFF where he studied for 5 years. Gansel is best known for directing The Wave and his following project; the vampire film We Are The Night, which starred Karoline Herfurth, Nina Hoss, Jennifer Ulrich, Anna Fischer and Max Riemelt. Other than directing, Gansel has also tried acting. He has had several small roles in his own movies as wells as others. Gansel frequently casts Max Riemelt in his films and frequently works with editor Jochen Retter and composer/musician Heiko Maile. His favourite director is Sydney Pollack.

Gansel uses a wide range of camera shots within the movie. The shots range from close-ups to long-shots. In the film we see several close-ups, these are of the characters in it and different props we see used. For example, we see close-ups of the faces of the actors within the first few scenes of the film. We see Arthur Bishop (Jason Statham) and Renee Tran (Rhatha Phongam) sitting at a table in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. Gansel uses close-ups of the characters to show their facial expressions while talking to each other. Gansel also uses close-ups and mid-shots of the henchmen that Tran has sitting in various places within the restaurant they are in. We also see several transitions where the screen fades to black at the end of one scene and we get an establishing shot of a new location. For example, we see this when the first scene which is set in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil and then we get an establishing shot of a boat in the ocean and we see that it is set in Koh Lipe, Southern Thailand. The use of the transitions helps the audience to know that the film has jumped ahead in time, so instead of saying 'One week later', it connotes the jump in time to the audience in a more subtle way.