Patrick Hughes, the director who gave us the franchise The Hitman's Bodyguard, has created a long-lost cousin with The Man From Toronto, an action-packed film starring Kevin Hart and Woody Harrelson as a screw-up salesman and the world's deadliest assassin who run into each other, form an odd friendship, and set out on an adventure for an impossible mission.
The plot tells the story of Teddy Jackson (Hart), a salesman and loser husband who repeatedly fails and tries to establish a fitness business idea. To please his beloved wife Lori (Jasmine Mathews), Teddy decides to take her on vacation to a cottage in Virginia when he's mistaken for the deadly assassin known as The Man From Toronto (Harrelson). The two eventually connect and are forced to team up as they go about their duties and race against time to stop crime.
According to IMDB, The Man From Toronto is billed as an action thriller, however, comedy plays a big role here. Kevin Hart is the man responsible for delivering all the laughs. Whether you find this movie funny or not depends on your humour. I don't mind a character with frantic performances who never stops talking and tries their best at being annoying, but Kevin Hart does everything from over-the-top whining and yelling to even puking on someone just to get laughs, which does work from time to time. Whereas Harrelson's character is basically just re-channelling his Zombieland's Tallahassee character with a mean, tough-guy persona.
Harrelson and Hart's onscreen dynamics are believable as unlikely buddies, and the two of them create a semi-humorous, dysfunctional couple. Their complex relationship is what keeps this movie afloat. They're completely opposite in personalities and IQ, but how they start off arguing and then bond over time provides enjoyable entertainment. There are some funny moments and scenarios to the point that I did chuckle a few times because something was either unexpected or very abrupt. But for the majority of this hour and 50-minute movie, the comedy felt a bit forced. The villains in the story are one of the weakest points as they are thinly developed and face no consequences. When their goal is clearly defined, it was quite hard for me to even care about their development.
The story is mediocre and feels choppy, as we have to overlook many scenarios that don't make much sense logically, especially where characters would be more sceptical of a situation. While there are several action scenes that take place during the movie, there's one scene towards the end, in particular, that is pretty wild. There's an all-out fight where the camera is bouncing between subjects capturing the action, and it is edited in a way to make it appear like it's one continuous take. I wish the film wouldn't have waited until the end to showcase something like this. However, anything that had to do with explosions was a mess. The practical effects look decent, but when they involve CGI, it looks terrible as you can clearly notice it was shot on a green screen. The variety of hitmen that appear in the final sequence does make up for this a bit. Even though those characters are mostly stereotypes, they help expand the world of the movie with its numerous settings and add to the fun stunt work.
The Man From Toronto has some potential to be a good action buddy comedy. Some of the humour and the final action sequence are done quite well. Unfortunately, to get to that point, we have to sit through sequences of predictable plots, average TV special effects and underdeveloped villains. Both Harrelson and Hart bring their charisma to the story, but it's not enough to drag this out of mediocrity.
- The Man from Toronto
- Starring Kevin Hart, Woody Harrelson, Jasmine Mathews
- Directed by Patrick Hughes
- Now streaming on Netflix
