Polar - one of the first releases of the year from Netflix - is a movie that channels the likes of movies like John Wick and Kill Bill, but is unfortunately nowhere near as fun or as exciting as either of those two movies. In fact, one can say it’s the polar opposite of both those movies (get it?). The movie is all style and no substance, with colorful characters and guns constantly a-blazing, but never really doing anything to make itself stand out, other than doing what it can to repeatedly get on your nerves as much as possible.
Based on the Dark Horse graphic novels of the same name, the film follows Duncan Vizla (Mads Mikkelson), an aging hitman who’s getting ready to retire. The organization he’s part of, led by a man named Mr. Blut (Matt Lucas), is severely in debt and in order to get their money back, has been killing off each of their assassins that have retired or are about to retire. The organization attempts to get rid of Duncan and collect his $8 million pension, but Duncan quickly turns the tables around and sets out to take them down. While he attempts to lay low, he meets a quiet young woman named Camille (Vanessa Hudgens) and the two lonely individuals form a bond as Duncan prepares to kill the people that tried killing him.
The movie boasts a solid group of talent, all of whom are clearly way too talented to be involved in this production. Mikkelson is a very charismatic and fun actor, having won over audiences as the antagonist in the James Bond film Casino Royale as well as the titular character in the NBC series Hannibal. Here, he gets to put none of that charisma to any real use. His character isn’t exactly all that complicated or well-developed. The only real layer his character has is the fact he has nightmares about a botched hit he performed years ago, when he ambushed a car carrying a family. This subplot has little effect on most of the movie and only ties into the grand scheme of things in one of the most predictable, contrived ways possible. Other than that, he’s simply an assassin collecting a paycheck and nothing more. He’s meant to be a mysterious loner, but mostly comes off wooden.
Vanessa Hudgens is the movie’s attempts to give Duncan an extra sense of humanity, but she’s given very little to do, and honestly her scenes just drag this movie out longer than it needed to be. The movie clocks in at almost exactly two hours, and this could have easily been cut down to a solid 90 minutes, as it could have easily worked around her character’s absence. Hudgens is a fine actress, but again, her subplot only connects to the movie in the most sickeningly forced way possible and it didn’t even feel truly needed. And this would have been forgivable had she been an interesting character for the most part. While I commend the movie for attempting to make the protagonists interesting, Duncan and Camille’s scenes are emotionless, uninteresting, and lack any sort of unique dialogue or serious character development for most of the movie.
This movie would have worked better had it just been Duncan against the organization, but even then, that’s questionable, as this is by far the most aggravating group of people I’ve ever seen in a movie. Since this is based on a graphic novel, a lot of the countless low-lives and seedy underlings that we meet are meant to look very over-the-top and exaggerated, almost to comical effect, just like how they’d appear in a typical stylized graphic novel.
However, that’s essentially all they have going for them. We’re introduced to a lot of different people associated with the evil organization, most of whom only have one or two scenes. Each of these villains look like a circus reject but have nothing else remotely interesting about them. They’re meant to be funny, but rather than any campy or quirky dialogue, they instead spout obscenely obnoxious dialogue. They’re loud and crazy, screaming most of their dialogue, and we’re supposed to laugh because they look funny and only know how to operate on one volume, but they continuously just babble nonsense until someone disposes of them.
While the random one-scene characters are aggravating enough, the hit squad sent to kill Duncan, as well as Mr. Blut, are by far the most obnoxious. Matt Lucas is a very competent actor, and anyone who’s a fan of British TV and seen him in action can easily attest to that. He attempts to bring the fun energy he normally brings and tries to give off this pseudo-Dr. Evil vibe, but his delivery just completely misses the mark. Meanwhile, the hit squad, who we’re introduced to in the very first scene, are meant to feel like the Deadly Viper Assassin Squad from Kill Bill, but are nowhere near as fun as those assassins. They spout Goodfellas-esque amounts of obscene dialogue (that’s meant to be funny because they know a lot of four-letter words) and contain women who gladly parade themselves around as sex objects to help get the job done, and that’s all there is to them. As soon as we’re introduced them, we’re already counting down the minutes until they’re disposed of.
The film is shot fairly well, with some solidly choreographed action sequences. Director Jonas Akerlund is a competent director who does know how to make a movie look visually appealing. But honestly, while the action scenes are slick, they’re far from anything truly unique. Or at the very least, they’re only memorable because each of them contains one of the countless obnoxious individuals who we’re hoping quickly gets silenced. And because the action scenes are only just good, and not extravagant, we stop caring by the time we’re halfway through the movie, and simply just hope for it to be over.
Polar contains a solid cast and a solid director, but is a totally dreadful experience. It contains painfully bad dialogue, wooden scenes that are meant to convey emotion, meaningless and contrived subplots, horribly written characters, with its one positive being some well-shot action scenes that aren’t bad but don’t do anything truly unique that can make up for its never-ending list of problems. This one is a complete dud.
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