Polar (2019)
Directed by Jonas Åkerlund
When a retiring assassin realizes that he is the target of a hit, he winds up back in the game going head to head with a gang of younger, ruthless killers.
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22 films that influenced Polar
What critics say influenced Polar
Duncan Vizla certainly looks like John Wick with his longish hair and stubble, and when he’s not naked he’s clad in a black suit and a black tie, standing in the shadows.
Instead Polar seems to take great inspiration from John Wick and the frenzied, hyper-violent work of Neveldine/Taylor in films like Crank (movies I quite enjoy) but fails to reconcile the in-your-face style it employs with the moody sensibilities of the core story, resulting in a movie that feels tonally imbalanced and confused, though it does manage to entertain and thrill from time to time.
If “John Wick” is a meaty steak, full of flavor that more than satisfies hunger pangs and “Crank” is cotton candy, sweet, tasty, but not very substantial, then Netflix‘s new action-thriller, “Polar,” directed by Jonas Åkerlund (“Spun“) and heavily indebted to both films, is what happens when you take a steak, cotton candy, and a healthy dose of your nearest narcotic and shove it all into a blender.
As appealing as a John Wick-esque action-thriller starring Mads Mikkelsen in the vengeful assassin role might seem on paper, this sketchy adaptation of Víctor Santos’ 2012 webcomic fatally overestimates its own charm and creativity, resulting in a loud and energetic yet mostly empty movie.
That’s not at all the case here; Åkerlund, presumably working with peanuts on Canadian soundstages, soaks Polar in ugly washes of purple, yellow, and red, making the whole thing look and feel like a cheap amalgam of John Wick and Suicide Squad .
It asks whether an actor’s effortlessly raffish, deliciously deadpan charms can make it out of a fetid misfire that plays like Uwe Boll’s John Wick.
Somebody online referred to this movie like one of those dated 90’s movies, something that would come out right after Pulp Fiction .
Polar is reminiscent of those Quentin Tarantino imitations from the ’90s—the ones whose creators looked at Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction , in which humorous moments are interspersed with bursts of graphic violence, and decided that the graphic violence itself was what was funny.
Instead Polar seems to take great inspiration from John Wick and the frenzied, hyper-violent work of Neveldine/Taylor in films like Crank (movies I quite enjoy) but fails to reconcile the in-your-face style it employs with the moody sensibilities of the core story, resulting in a movie that feels tonally imbalanced and confused, though it does manage to entertain and thrill from time to time.
If “John Wick” is a meaty steak, full of flavor that more than satisfies hunger pangs and “Crank” is cotton candy, sweet, tasty, but not very substantial, then Netflix‘s new action-thriller, “Polar,” directed by Jonas Åkerlund (“Spun“) and heavily indebted to both films, is what happens when you take a steak, cotton candy, and a healthy dose of your nearest narcotic and shove it all into a blender.
Director Jonas Åkerlund (Spun, Lords of Chaos) is clearly trying to evoke the same heightened, deceptively clever style and tone of Neveldine/Taylor’s Crank movies – and with the absence of a third Crank, there’s certainly an appetite for that – but without the duo’s sly stylistic brio or good taste in bad taste, this mostly comes off as desperately, self-consciously edgy.
It’s Kingsman without the know-how, Crank without the cunning, TV’s Happy! without the heart — although it tries for that, with unintentionally laughable results, during a climax that feels like a cut-rate Bourne Supremacy conclusion.
Netflix’s Polar is best described as John Wick meets Atomic Blonde meets Crank .
Polar is reminiscent of those Quentin Tarantino imitations from the ’90s—the ones whose creators looked at Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction , in which humorous moments are interspersed with bursts of graphic violence, and decided that the graphic violence itself was what was funny.
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By contrast, Polar feels like Smokin’ Aces — t he oversaturated, “edgy”, 2006 shoot-em-up about a bunch of assassins going at it in all senses of the phrase.
Polar fits in nicely with a whole host of similar pictures: John Wick 2 , Smokin' Aces , Hotel Artemis , et cetera, movies in which odd and flamboyant killers murder each other in vaguely absurd ways.
It’s a fun, violent, well-crafted scene playing every bit towards fans of Shoot ‘Em Up (2007) and Smokin’ Aces (2006).
It’s likely supposed to be reminiscent of The Professional , one of several 90s-early 00s action-crime-dramas the filmmakers chewed up and shat out to make this, with the extra added tease of “maybe they’ll fuck at some point” (they don’t, incredibly, which is the only time this movie exercises any restraint).
Their dynamic feels ripped straight out of The Professional , but it feels bizarre coming from a thirty-year-old actress who seems to be playing a tween.
Duncan’s gloves that control Gatling guns recall the rig in “Shoot ’Em Up,” only without any humor to the bombast.
Only in this moment do we get a sense for the streamlined shoot-’em-up (or, at the very least, Shoot ’Em Up ) that Polar should have been.
It’s a fun, violent, well-crafted scene playing every bit towards fans of Shoot ‘Em Up (2007) and Smokin’ Aces (2006).
It’s a typically reliable sub-genre with some real standouts in the likes of Grosse Point Blank (1997), In Bruges (2008), and The Matador (2005), but even lesser entries can make for passable entertainment with the right balance of laughs and carnage.
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While the female villains dress like Sin City characters, Camille is vulnerable and wears modest cold-weather gear.
The original graphic novel on which it was based was a minimalist affair, with a Sin City black-and-white-and-red-all-over aesthetic that keeps its hitman antics restrained.
Scenes in which Blut’s team of assassins empty clips into a morbidly obese man in America, complete with bullets going through large soda cups and bags of cheese curls, wouldn’t feel out of place in Postal or Rampage , Jayson Rothwell’s screenplay burning with barely concealed contempt for everyone save for stoic dudes with eyepatches and mad fight skills.