Polygon.com / 28.04.25

Action heroes, normal jobs

The box-office options for action fans this April have been a dual offering of The Accountant 2 and A Working Man. Both promise viewers cinematic thrills regardless of whether they choose to see Jason Statham stylishly take down human traffickers or Ben Affleck return to crunch numbers and crack skulls. These two films also point to a growing storytelling trend in the action landscape that has only become more pronounced with each passing year: the rise of the working-class action hero. Not unlike the classic idea of the secret identity popularized by superhero stories, these action film protagonists lead dual lives. One is filled with exciting, death-defying struggles, the other with a regular job as uneventfully mundane as any experienced by the audience. These jobs can serve a wide range of narrative purposes for a film: creating relatability, illustrating contrasts, providing unique weapons, or giving justifiable reasons for conflict, to name just a handful. But how much do these ...
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