Director: Patrick Hughes
Writers: Robbie Fox and Chris Bremner
Starring: Kevin Hart, Woody Harrelson, Kaley Cuoco, Jasmine Matthews, and Ellen Barkin.
Synopsis: The world’s deadliest assassin and New York’s biggest screw-up are mistaken for each other at an Airbnb rental.
Kevin Hart has reshaped his film career as a decent actor doing entertaining enough projects after the disastrous Ride Along, and Get Hard. Since, he’s made enjoyable films like Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, Jumanji: The Next Level, and Fatherhood, and the level of maturity he brought to his respective roles were not only very funny, but contained a tremendous amount of heart in his performances. His latest movie, The Man From Toronto, brings back the old version of Hart and sticks him in a painfully annoying (and dull) buddy comedy featuring the worst action sequences you’ll see all year.
Initially slated to release in theaters, the film’s rights were acquired by Netflix due to the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. One perfectly understands why Sony decided to sell the movie to a streaming service as soon as the first action scene appears—a poorly shot and edited fight inside an airplane that culminates with, hands down, the most atrocious CGI I’ve seen in a major motion picture all year. I had to rewind to see if what I witnessed was real, but the visual effects are as bad as a SyFy original film…with a $75 million budget. It had a bigger budget than Todd Phillips’ Joker and yet looks like it was made for $5. Every action sequence is edited to shreds, which seems to be a recurring motif in Patrick Hughes’ films, even his R-rated The Hitman’s Bodyguard films.
Of course, there seem to be lots of restraint in wanting the movie to be rated R to fully display The Man from Toronto’s (Woody Harrelson) abilities through hard R-rated action scenes, but the PG-13 rating prevents any large-scale action scene from being memorable in any way, especially considering how shoddy looking the VFX and cinematography are. Hughes likely faced some studio pushback from Sony to tamper down the brutality, because editor Craig Alpert cuts at almost every opportunity to hide the blood and any type of gruesome effect that would make the action feel cathartic and raw. And the editing isn’t solely a problem in the action scenes–the camera speeds up every time it changes a location while cutting in the middle of that specific moment. It’s hard to explain what visually occurs without seeing it, but it’s horrible. It wouldn’t be as bad if it happened only once, but it happens all the time. Without fail.
And I’d be more forgiving of the film’s technical aspects if the rest of it was enjoyable, but very little of it made me laugh, or feel anything. Hart is back in his old self as Teddy, an aspiring salesperson trying to convince the world that non-contact boxing will revolutionize fitness, and gets mixed up while on holiday with an assassin, The Man from Toronto, and the schtick gets tiresome real fast. The jokes are either terribly unfunny or go on for too long. There’s a legitimate five-minute bit involving Ellen Barkin’s Handler who tries to convince the main antagonist that Teddy is an impostor, and Hart mumbles on and on for five straight minutes, without pause, and without bringing any ounce of laughter to anyone watching. I don’t even believe Hart (or Harrelson) found the material funny, even if their chemistry kept me moderately engaged.
But the best part of The Man from Toronto comes in a minor supporting role from Pierson Fodé as The Man from Miami, the assassin The Handler tasks to kill The Man from Toronto and Teddy, as being around Teddy has made Toronto go soft. Fodé owns every aspect of his ultra-caricatural performance, nailing the fight moves (they’re truly the only times where the action sequences produce something exciting) of a martial arts expert, and always arrives “in the nick of time” to spice things up a bit. It’s a shame his role wasn’t expanded as the film’s main antagonist, because he absolutely rules in every single scene he’s in.
Aside from that, The Man from Toronto is a largely unimpressive bore, even if Hart and Harrelson try to keep their chemistry as engaging as possible. But the both of them just aren’t funny together as they work with some of the most uninspired material for a buddy comedy involving two of the biggest stars working today. We’ve seen the story before, and the movie does nothing to reinvent the wheel, on top of delivering the very worst action scenes of any film released this year so far. I’d like to think that COVID will now be used as an excuse for major studios to get rid of some of their most embarrassing films to streaming services, even if audiences have come back to cinemas multiple times. The Man from Toronto may very well begin that trend.
Grade: D
