Polar

Portrait of a badass.

(2019) Action (Netflix) Mads Mikkelsen, Vanessa Hudgens, Katheryn Winnick, Fei Ren, Ruby O. Fee, Matt Lucas, Robert Maillet, Anthony Grant, Josh Cruddas, Lovina Yavan, Ayisha Issa, Pedro Miguel Arce, Anastasia Marinina, Martin Zolotarev, Richard Dreyfuss, Johnny Knoxville, Inga Cadranel, Jill Frappier, Nia Roam, Julian Richings, Roman Lebeau, Sofia Grossi. Directed by Jonas Åkerlund

 

It should come as no surprise to anyone who’s seen Polar that it is based on a graphic novel. Everything about the movie screams “comic book,” from the color palette to the emphasis on feminine boot-ay and boobies, to the well-choreographed mayhem that takes place with a surfeit of blood and gore.

Duncan (Mikkelsen) works as an assassin-for-hire for the Damocles Corporation, where he is known as the Black Kaiser. He is nearing the mandatory retirement age of 50 and looks forward to receiving his pension and retiring to his remote Montana home. Unfortunately for him, the company’s corpulent owner Blut (Lucas) is looking to sell and needs to maximize its value. A clause in the contract says that if employees die without a will, the pension goes back to the company. Blut aims to kill all the veteran assassins who largely have had no relationships over the years and use the money to prop up the liquid cash holdings of the company. A true Republican move, that.

But Duncan isn’t so easy to kill and despite the parade of colorful killers sent his way, continues to survive much to the irritation of Blut. Duncan has also formed a relationship with Camille (Hudgens) who lives nearby (i.e. within 100 miles). If Duncan can live long enough to collect his pension, there are going to be an awful lot of openings at Damocles.

For action junkies, there is a whole lot of that and just the way you like it, too – long on gore and short on sense. There are a lot of backhanded compliments to other lone assassin stories, with John Wick chief among them, although the world of Polar is a lot less developed than the world of John Wick. There is also the subversive humor of the Neveldine brothers as well.

I have definitely got a man-crush on Mads Mikkelsen. The man never seems to make a bad acting decision. He is one of those guys who is never flashy, but always makes every movie he is cast in just that much better. He can do the taciturn loner about as well as anybody including Keanu Reeves – although not as well as Clint Eastwood in his heyday (sorry, Mads).

Critics have basically torn this film a new one, but I don’t know. I think of it as a guilty pleasure. It’s definitely a film for boys, though – not that women won’t or can’t enjoy it, but it certainly panders to that demographic.

REASONS TO SEE: Has the feel of a cinematic comic book. Mikkelsen is awesome, as always.
REASONS TO AVOID: Gets a little bit self-repetitive near the end.
FAMILY VALUES: Lots and lots of violence and gore, plenty of profanity and some sexuality.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: While there is an actress named Marsha Mason in the cast, it is not the same one that appeared with Richard Dreyfuss in The Goodbye Girl.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Netflix
CRITICAL MASS: As of 6/3/20: Rotten Tomatoes: 19% positive reviews, Metacritic: 19/100
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Atomic Blonde
FINAL RATING: 7/10
NEXT: Feral

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The Big Bang

Noir, 21st Century-style.

(2010) Mystery (Anchor Bay) Antonio Banderas, Sienna Guillory, James van der Beek, Snoop Dogg, Autumn Reeser, Sam Elliot, Jimmi Simpson, Thomas Kretschmann, William Fichtner, Robert Maillet, Delroy Lindo, Bill Duke, Rebecca Mader, Robert Ernie Lee, Rachel Handler, Sean Cook, Khanh Doan, Keith MacGeagh, Chandra Bailey. Directed by Tony Krantz

When you think of film noir, you think of hard-bitten detectives in rumpled suits, gorgeous dames in dresses two sizes too tight and big bruising thugs with brass knuckles. You think of soft black and white, foggy back alleys and sleazy private investigator offices. You think of Bogart, Bacall, Mitchum and Greenstreet. You don’t think of Antonio Banderas and neon colored strip clubs.

But they can be noir too. In this celluloid extravaganza Banderas is Ned Cruz, a P.I. from the mean streets of L.A. A Russian boxer named Anton “The Pro” Protopov (Maillet), freshly release from prison after killing a man in the ring, is looking for a girl. Not just any girl though – you can find one on the Internet – but the lovely Lexi Persimmon. You heard me. Anyway, she wrote him a bunch of letters in the slam but gave the galoot no info to go on, no address, no social security, no phone number – not even an e-mail.

There’s also this stash of $40 million in blood diamonds, a waitress named Fay (Reeser) who loves particle physics, a porn director (Dogg) who loves his product a little too much, a kinky movie star (van der Beek) with a dark secret, a cross-dressing nuclear physicist (Simpson), a crazy billionaire (Elliot) obsessed with finding the God particle and willing to re-create the Big Bang in the New Mexico desert to do it and the billionaire’s wife (Guillory) who might be the key to the whole sordid tale. Oh, and did we mention the three brutal cops (Kretschmann, Lindo and Fichtner) chasing down Cruz to find out where the diamonds are?

On paper this really does sound like my kind of movie – something smart but timeless, using the conventions of a noir detective thriller with a touch of sci-fi and a little bit of black humor mixed in. However, references to physics and science doesn’t necessarily a smart film make although this one is pretty clever in places.

Banderas is an engaging star but I didn’t really believe him in the role. Ned Cruz should have been a lot more badass than pretty boy; in some ways I think Danny Trejo might have been more suitable but of course Banderas is the bigger box office draw so from that standpoint I can’t really blame the producers.

The cast is pretty impressive for a low budget thriller with a tiny distributor but not many of them get the kind of screen time that makes for much of an impression. Most are little more than cameos although Elliot seems to be having the most fun playing the kind of character he rarely gets to play while Simpson camps it up nicely. Reeser and Guillory really don’t have much more to do but look pretty which to be fair they do very, very well – but I suspect if their characters had been given a little more fleshing out they would have risen to the challenge as well.

I don’t think the movie achieves everything the filmmakers set out to do, but it is entertaining enough to be worth a look-see. Although I criticized his casting earlier, Banderas at least does an adequate job of playing the tough guy and of course doing the narration which is a noir tradition. While the movie takes a few left turns too many, it nonetheless at least doesn’t disgrace the genre and given that since its heyday many have tried but few have succeeded in giving us a good noir thriller I have to at least admire the attempt.

WHY RENT THIS: A noir thriller involving particle physics – I can’t make this stuff up. Decent cast.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Goes a little bit off into left field occasionally.

FAMILY VALUES: There is some nudity and quite a bit of sexuality (some of it graphic), a bit of foul language and some violence.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: There was an extended sex scene shot that got the film an NC-17 rating that was removed from the film in order to bring it down to an R rating; director Krantz refers to it on the home video commentary track but the scene isn’t included on the Blu-Ray release.

NOTABLE HOME VIDEO EXTRAS: None listed.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: Not available

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid

FINAL RATING: 6/10

NEXT: The Perfect Host