Kevin Hart and Woody Harrelson are Mismatched Action Buddies in ‘The Man from Toronto’ Trailer
It’s a mistaken identity action comedy from Patrick Hughes, director of ‘The Hitman’s Bodyguard’.
(L to R) Kevin Hart and Woody Harrelson in Netflix's 'The Man from Toronto.'
Kevin Hart has appeared in mismatched buddy action comedies before, but he’s usually been paired with Dwayne Johnson. For ‘The Man from Toronto’, however, he’s playing off against Woody Harrelson.
It gives a very different dynamic for the film, which comes from director Patrick Hughes, a man with no little experience of action buddy comedies after working on ‘The Hitman’s Bodyguard’ and ‘The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard’.
The new action pic finds Hart’s Teddy, a screw-up salesman arriving at what he thinks is he Airbnb he booked. Turns out, he’s actually at a cabin where a victim is awaiting torture; and everyone thinks that Teddy is The Man from Toronto, a legendary, mysterious mercenary and assassin.
When the FBI raids the cabin, they decide that Teddy should pose as the assassin in order to lure him out. And when he does finally meet the man in question, they actually end up teamed – though of course, things do not go well for Teddy, who is not a natural when it comes to the killing and the torturing and the general mayhem.
The cast for the new comedy also includes the likes of Ellen Barkin, Kaley Cuoco, Jasmine Mathews, Kate Drummond, Rob Archer, Pierson Fode, Tomohisa Yamashita and Ronnie Rowe. Jason Blumenthal and Robbie Fox wrote the story, while the screenplay is by Fox and Chris Bremner.
And though Harrelson has proved he can be a tough guy – see the likes of ‘Natural Born Killers’ and the ‘Zombieland’ movies, he wasn’t actually the first choice. Jason Statham was in talks to co-star, but abruptly backed out when the movie was close to shooting in 2020. The action star was insisting on making an R-rated film, but studio Sony – which was behind the movie originally – was firm on the idea of this being a four-quadrant film with wider appeal.
Harrelson was hired to replace him, but though the movie made it into production, Sony then sold it to Netflix, obviously concerned at the time about the impact of the pandemic on release dates.
Given the re-ignition of the box office (even for Sony, with movies such as ‘Uncharted’), the company may come to regret offloading a potentially popular comedy starring reliable draw Hart. Still, this way audiences still get to see it.
Next up for Harrelson will be Ruben Östlund’s satirical comedy ‘Triangle of Sadness’, which won awards at the Cannes Film Festival, and he’s also part of the cast for new comedy limited series ‘The White House Plumbers’, which will be on HBO this year.
Hart has ‘DC League of Super Pets’ headed into theaters on July 29th, with ‘Me Time’ arriving on Netflix on August 26th and video game adaptation ‘Borderlands’ also due out this year.
‘The Man from Toronto’ will hit Netflix on June 24th.
(L to R) Woody Harrelson and Kevin Hart in Netflix's 'The Man from Toronto.'
