Plot: After fleeing the UK from a job gone wrong, a down-on-his-luck hitman is forced to babysit the son of his new crime boss and show him how to become a man.
Review: There was a time when Josh Duhamel was on pace to be the hottest actor in Hollywood. With matinee idol good looks, Duhamel headlined the first entries in Michael Bay’s Transformers franchise and five seasons of NBC’s comedy-drama Las Vegas. In recent years, Duhamel has appeared in various projects on the big and small screen that have failed to capture the charisma he brought to projects early in his career. The new film London Calling continues to mine Duhamel’s ability to handle action and drama with a heavy dose of comedy for a movie that feels like a mash-up of John Wick and Dave Bautista’s My Spy. While London Calling has some charming moments, it doesn’t quite pull it together, even with Duhamel doing his best opposite Jeremy Ray Taylor as his partner in crime.
London Calling follows renowned hitman Tommy Ward (Josh Duhamel), who works for crime boss Freddy Darby (Aidan Gillen). Despite worsening eyesight, Ward refuses to get glasses, which leads to a botched job and an urgent need to flee the United Kingdom. Leaving his ex-wife and son behind, Ward moves to Los Angeles, where he works as a gun for hire for local kingpin Benson (Rick Hoffman). Desperate to return to London, Tommy makes a deal with Benson to get him on a flight back in exchange for training Benson’s son, Julian (Jeremy Ray Taylor), a nerdy eighteen-year-old who enjoys LARPing. Tommy reluctantly takes on Julian as they are tasked with killing legendary assassin Alistair McRory (Neil Sandilands), who has had a mental breakdown and may reveal secrets to the police. At first, Tommy and Julian make for an odd pair, but their dynamic grows throughout the film as they become friends.
Clocking in at just under two hours, London Calling opens with a badass sequence of a bald Duhamel in a suit as he takes on a mission in a nightclub. The look and feel of these first minutes gave me hope that this movie would have a dynamic, John Wick atmosphere, but when the comedy starts rolling, the film switches to a much more conventional tone and look. With a dyed beard and greasy hair, Duhamel looks like a grizzled hitman despite his line delivery feeling much lighter and more everyman than you would expect. Duhamel and Jeremy Ray Taylor have a nice chemistry between them that I did not expect to like as much as I did, but it works since the two factor into almost every scene of the film. The movie works well as Tommy teaches Julian self-defense techniques and how to learn best to be a hitman. However, little elements like Julian’s proficiency with guns, thanks to playing video games, seem to set up moments that never happen in the movie. London Calling has a lot of plot threads that are introduced that could have been excised.
The fact that Josh Duhamel’s Tommy is a nice guy who happens to kill a lot of people and is teaching a nice kid how to do the same makes for a difficult barrier to liking these characters, but Duhamel and Taylor are very likable, even when they are burying bodies, doing cocaine, and dispatching henchmen. Equally, there seem to be too many bad guys in this movie. Aidan Gillen’s Freddy Darby is a cliché British gangster who is not used as well as he could have been. Neil Sandilands’ Alistair McRory shifts wildly from unkillable assassin to a headcase and back again. Rick Hoffman’s Benson may be the cruelest character in the film despite not getting in on the main action once. A brief appearance by Arnold Vosloo early in the movie seems like an unnecessary cameo, while brief turns by the rest of the cast fail to develop into any characters worth caring about.
Written by newcomers Omer Levin Menekse and Quinn Wolfe alongside director Allan Ungar, London Calling has many sparks of potential throughout the film that fail to come together cohesively. Ungar, known for helming Bandit, Gridlocked, and Tapped Out, does a nice job of keeping the action scenes propulsive and fun with some stylish sequences peppered throughout the movie. A recurring gag about Tommy’s eyesight and another about the unkillable Alistair start funny but seem to wear thin as the movie continues, with the running time about fifteen minutes too long. I will give Ungar credit for the best use of Vengaboys I have heard in a long time, but also curse him for putting their song “We Like to Party! (The Vengabus)” back in my head after finally escaping it years ago.
There is a charm to the pairing of Duhamel and Taylor that could have buoyed this film were it not for the thin script that fails to develop the villains enough and puts far too much of the toxic Benson on screen. I wanted to like this movie, but it is just too familiar without distinguishing itself from countless other buddy action movies that came before it. If Allan Ungar ever wanted to make a movie expanding on the opening scene of this film, I would be intrigued to see it. London Calling is not the right project to capitalize on Josh Duhamel’s charm as a leading man. I had hoped this movie would have stuck with me more, but London Calling is unfortunately forgettable.
London Calling is now in theaters.
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