Production notes

Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff, producers of the 1972 film, sought to make an update. Pre-rights to the remake were sold in February 2009 at the Berlin Film Festival. Variety reported that the screenplay was written by Karl Gajdusek. However, the final script is credited to Richard Wenk and Lewis John Carlino (the writer of the 1972 film).

Director Simon West and Jason Statham were announced as part of the project three months later. Ben Foster and Donald Sutherland were cast alongside Statham in October 2009.

Filming began in New Orleans, Louisiana, on October 26, 2009. Filming locations included St. Tammany Parish, the World Trade Center in downtown New Orleans, and the Algiers Seafood Market.

The film grossed $11.4 million on its opening weekend in the U.S. and Canada. It ended with a North American gross of $29.1 million and $47.2 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $76.3 million.

The Mechanic received mixed reviews from critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an approval rating of 54%, based on 165 reviews, with a rating average of 5.6/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Jason Statham and Ben Foster turn in enjoyable performances, but this superficial remake betrays them with mind-numbing violence and action thriller cliches." On Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score to reviews from mainstream critics, the film received an average score of 49 out of 100, based on 35 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale.

Roger Ebert awarded the film two out of four stars:Audiences have been drilled to accept noise and movement as entertainment. It is done so well one almost forgets to ask why it has been done at all.