Mads Mikkelsen does his best to try and save this sinking ship, and for all intents and purposes he does, if only ever keeping it afloat and barely reaching shore. A lesser lead, and I would have turned this wannabe Tarantino / John Wick flick off about 30 minutes in. To paraphrase a Rotten Tomatoes review, if you haven't seen an action film since 1988, this movie would seem groundbreaking. The problem is, it's been done countless times, and way better. What the movie does, at least kinda, right is the casting, with some solid support acting delivered by Vanessa Hudgens and Katheryn Winnick, and some of the jokes do hit, even though most seem to be cheap ripoffs (there's a theme here) of better material. The ending also get's points for being thoroughly unpredictable, but all of these elements only barely redeems what is essentially a mess of poorly developed ideas. What is most disappointing though, is that Mikkelsen has got everything it takes to pick up the mantle as the next old tough guy in Hollywood after Liam Neeson, who is just about good and ready to leave it behind, if he hasn't already. But Neeson had "Taken" to propel that chapter of his career, "Polar" is just not good enough to do the same for Mikkelsen. I am of course grossly speculating that Mikkelsen would even want to take that path in his career at this point, or if this was just a one-off to try and widen his already impressive resume. Whatever the case, he deserved a better movie.
Review of Polar
