Title – The Man from Toronto (2022)

Director – Patrick Hughes (The Expendables 3) 

Cast – Kevin Hart, Woody Harrelson, Kaley Cuoco, Ellen Barkin

Plot – Mild-mannered and ill-equipped Teddy (Hart) is mistakenly identified as the deadly hitman The Man from Toronto (Harrelson), as the two mismatched souls must work together to take down a world wide threat. 

“Hitman meets dead man” 

Review by Eddie on 29/06/2022

No one was expecting the $75 million dollar Netflix original action comedy The Man from Toronto to be anything more than it promised to be but it’s fair to say that even the low expectations set on this mismatched buddies film have not been met, with a tiresome and unfunny finished project that wastes the talents of his main duo and fails to excite or provide comedic goodness while doing so. 

Directed by Australian ex-pat Patrick Hughes, who has seemingly resigned himself to a career as director for hire after his promising breakout Red Hill suggested he was a director to watch only for him to go about helming forgettable action escapades that may’ve peaked with the tolerable The Hitman’s Bodyguard, Toronto isn’t without promise as it throws loud mouthed Kevin Hart with the if looks could kill coldness of Woody Harrelson but while threatening in brief moments to actually become funny and off-kilter, Hughes’s by the numbers outing never gets going on its way to a close to two hour runtime that runs out of gas far before the finish line. 

Starting out with a strong enough set-up as we follow Hart’s mild-mannered New York struggler Teddy to a romantic getaway where his wrongfully thought to be notorious and bloodthirsty hitman The Man from Toronto (played by the snarling Harrelson), Toronto very quickly gives way too a scenario that never even attempts to do anything surprising or inventive as Hart and Harrelson have difficulty keeping their heads above water as Robbie Fox’s and Chris Bremner’s sinking screenplay surrounds them at all instances. 

Feeling very much cut from the same cloth as Hughes’s two Bodyguard films and virtually any such comedic action film that pits unlikely partners together to achieve the greater good, Toronto is unable to find any charm or magic of its own as its jokes are signposted from miles off and its two talented leads get hamstrung by a film that doesn’t appear to have let them have any fun or add their own flavour to proceedings in favour of sticking close to the script and the low common denominators present throughout. 

With Netflix failing in the most part to deliver prestige offerings of much note, Toronto is the exact type of carefree entertainment the flailing streaming giant needs to get right, features that can be enjoyed and consumed without much care but no regrets but it’s unlikely many will walk away from a viewing of this film feeling like it was two hours of well spent time, as one can only focus on all the missed opportunities and wasted talent rather than what fun they had with such a drab and lifeless affair. 

Final Say – 

The Man from Toronto was never going to be a gamechanger but as it stands as a finished product this Netflix release works neither as comedy or an action film and merely exists to frustrate viewers wondering what might have been. 

1 1/2 Youtube videos out of 5