Polar

Man I hope Victor Santos got a lot of money for this.

Lets make something very clear from the start: Polar is not a good movie. It isn’t a good “bad” movie, it is one minute shy of two hours’ worth of juvenile nihilism parading as black humor. As a critic I try to never fully write something off or reducing it down to “bad,” but this movie makes Suicide Squad seem entertaining and competent. Don’t watch it, but please read why you shouldn’t.

Going in, the film had a fair amount of promise. In this post-Taken and John Wick world, Mads Mikkelsen getting a turn at the middle aged assassin role is an easy sell. It looked like a throwback to those early 00’s digital direct to video features and Tony Scott’s sensibilities. The webcomic it’s based on by Victor Santos is a stylish dialogue free exercise in sequential art. Director Jonas Åkerlund is an excellent music video director and his black metal biopic of Mayhem and Burzum,Lords of Chaos, earned good reviews on the festival circuit. None of that initial promise survives the very first scene.

So what went wrong? Pretty much everything.

Polar is, obstensibly, the story of Duncan Vizla aka the Black Kaiser attempts and inability to live a quite retired life. I say “obstensibly” because what Jayson Rothwell’s script delivers is pure plot, not story. The plot is simple, Vizla’s firm, Damocles, would very much prefer him to die before turning 50 so they don’t have to payout his hefty retirement package. The results are a plot of betrayal begeting more betrayal and blood, soo much blood. What makes the John Wick franchise instant classics is their ability to weave compelling emotional character storytelling with the violent blood letting plot. Polar has all the hallmarks of a standard story for the genre and fails at delivering anything close to that base level substance.

The original comic was silent, so the addition of dialogue is a new avenue for narrating character. It may not have made for a better movie, but keeping things silent would’ve made for a more interesting movie. Rothwell’s dialog is largely pointless anyways, lacking turns of phrase and often just falling into repetition. This new avenue fails to add a meaningful dimension to the cast of characters. There is a odd disconnect between the dialog and overall aesthetic of the movie, it lacks the over the top pomp the film has. Matt Lucas tries to bring some of that over the top quality with his performance, but there just isn’t enough material. Vanessa Hudgens isn’t given much as Camille either, one of the purest damsel characters seen in a long time.

The script for Polar is a colossal technical failure that unmoors it from any sort of sound structure. Laying the films shortcomings solely at the script would be letting Jonas Åkerlund off too easy. With its garish, overdone, color balance and stylish but not-quite glam costuming, the film is firmly in that B-movie realm but fails to display the novel technical know-how that can elevate the material. It feels like a throwback to the films of nearly two decades ago as digital was opening up production and filmmakers like Tony Scott were using it to go even wilder. With his music video background, Åkerlund was an excellent choice for this as the film leans into the MTV aesthetic. From the very first scene as the squad of elite Damocles mercenaries take out Johnny Knoxville, who is appropriately high on cocaine. The squad all get flashy title cards – since it isn’t like they say one anothers name or are worth remembering in the first place. In practice, Polar plays like a Tony Scott film coked out of its ever-loving mind but somehow fails to keep the mania that was initially promised.

If Polar was just this hollow stylish throwback film I wouldn’t disregard it nearly as harshly. What pushes this film down further is how that aesthetic is used. It appears the film is trying to create some black humor as it hyper violently cuts through everything. That “humor” is both profoundly lacking and poor cover for juvenile nihilism, mixing death drive with lust. It tries to be an exploitation film but fails at capitalizing on their predecessors success. Instead you get this movie with the emotional intelligence and sensibility of a 13 year old boy as the camera is equally fascinated with the scantily clad female body as it is documenting the vulnerable and erect male body. Everything comes together in this vapid id cocktail.

Part of the film’s lack of proper exploitation and humor is how the film uses hyperviolence. The films of David Leitch treat their leading bodies as vulnerable but determined, an interesting twist on 80s action. This twist when mixed with solid choreography and film craft make for some impactful, awe inspiring, sequences. The Deadpool films take this determination a step further into full parody of the unstoppable action body and violence associated with it. The gore in each case is used as a medium to further a point. In Polar the gore is the point, like a strange uncritical homage to the work of Paul Verhoeven. As the film falls into yet another montage of bodily torture I glanced down at the remaining run time. That sense of boredom is among the films greatest failures, for all the excess and graphic kineticisim, it gets boring quick. If every action sequence was a banger, putting up with the odd pace wouldn’t have been an issue. Just go watch the two action sequences worth watching, Duncan taking out the mercs and him escaping his torture, on YouTube if you want to see Mads Mikkelsen play assassin.

To say something, slightly, in the films favor: the early juxtaposition between the monotony Duncan experiences and the kinetic montage of violence brought by the mercs is well done. Mikkelsen’s performance as he lives this boring existence is fantastic, partly because I suspect he really was bored by all of this. Cinematographer Pär M. Ekberg naturalism in these sequences is far more effective than the layers of artifice the film tacks on itself.

Polar is a vapid, unintelligent, expression of juvenile id and yet still manages to bore. There are much better things to watch on Netflix or comics to read than put up with this.