The Sunday Mail
Film Review
Tinashe Kusema
A week after watching “The Man From Toronto”, I find it weirdly funny that I still cannot make heads or tails out of the new Netflix comedy.
I mean, the film is as generic as a production gets!
Talk of a one-note predictable script, use of tired and almost clichéd troupe.
However, I often found myself laughing out loud throughout the 112-minute movie.
Kevin Hart stars as Teddy Nilson, a failed internet athletic instructor and all-round loser.
He gets mistaken for an assassin only identified as “The man from Toronto” (Woody Harrelson) while out treating his wife Lori (Jasmine Mathews) for her birthday.
After federal agents raid a cabin in which Nilson gets mistaken for the assassin, they coerce him to follow through in hopes of identifying the assassin and catching an exiled Venezuelan Colonel Marin (Alejandro De Hoyos).
This has to happen before Colonel Marin follows through on his plan to assassinate the President of Venezuela at the new Venezuelan embassy.
Nilson gets kidnapped by the real assassin and the two build a friendship while trying to evade a legion of assassins that are sent to eliminate them.
As far as writing goes, this is laziness at its peak as the film is as predictable as it gets.
It is a tired storyline we have heard and seen on the big screen countless times.
Polar opposite characters are forced to work together and avoid certain death all the while building a friendship.
What makes this worse is that writers Robbie Fox and Jason Blumenthal make no attempt to introduce anything new and waste an otherwise talented cast.
Hart does all the heavy lifting, while the rest of the cast that includes Harrelson, Kaley Couco (Anne) and Mathews (Lori) mere passages who the camera occasionally pans to here and there.
To his credit, Hart puts up a vintage performance with his physical comedy and timing all on point.
His character comes off multi-faceted.
On the surface, he looks like a loser who cannot do anything right but has one or two moments that he comes off as relatable.
The heart of the character is a man who just wants to do right by his wife and make her happy but the universe seems to be conspiring against him.
This is one of my major criticisms of the movie as it could have benefited more from giving Mathew’s character more material and spent more time trying to develop her relationship with Nilson.
Instead, it appears like the writers sacrificed substance for cheap laughs as the movie is more or less a one-man show.
Even Harrelson’s character is half-baked, as we do not really see enough of his softer side to justify why he does not end up in jail.
After all, he is an assassin who has tortured and killed countless people.
The least they could have done was paint him out to be one of those killers with a moral compass.
I know it is another cliché; but if you are going the tried-and-tested route, then go all in.
