'The Man From Toronto' allows Netflix to burn more money
Netflix
If every movie theoretically has at least one ideal viewer, “The Man From Toronto” is, at last, a comedy for people who love jokes about toner. This is not a metaphor or a hypothetical; over and over again, we are supposed to find it beyond hilarious that an enormous, violent, world-impacting mix-up occurred because Teddy (Kevin Hart) didn’t replace the toner in his printer and accidentally went to the house where the titular hitman (Woody Harrelson) was expected to deliver one of his trademark, uh, intimidations. If you are thinking, “The word toner can’t possibly be used more than five times in the movie,” you would be wrong.
You would also be wrong to think that Netflix is trying to do anything more here than add to its list of movies to half-watch while working out. The action-comedy-buddy-movie here is entirely finger paint by numbers, as Teddy becomes wrapped into a complicated criminal investigation while at first fearing and then—cough, spoiler alert, eyeroll—teaming up with the increasingly soft-hearted killer who we’re meant to see as a traumatized child who grew up to be ruthless on the outside and cuddly on the inside. We could talk about that all day, but we won’t.
Obviously, the movie isn’t meant to be psychologically astute. It most certainly couldn’t spell psychologically astute, if movies could spell. This one mostly plays the same notes on repeat about Teddy being a ridiculous screw-up and an expanding group of killers from around the world (The Man From Miami, The Man From Tokyo, etc., yet never a man from U.N.C.L.E.) who are always men and always stereotypes.
This isn’t to say director Patrick Hughes (the man from the “Hitman’s Bodyguard” franchise; this guy certainly has a type) doesn’t deliver some impressive action sequences or get some laughs from the seemingly incongruous, occasionally winning pairing of Hart and Harrelson. “The Man From Toronto,” which by the way is very much not a badass name for a movie or a hitman, strives to pass some time, and for about 30 minutes of its nearly two-hour running time, it does.
C-
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