Review of Polar (2019) by Viniciusbrito — 06 Feb 2019

A institution of professional killers have a policy of retirement at age 50. When the employee retires, they recieve millions of dollars, and for the company to keep their money and pay their bills they kill every single one that reaches 50 years old, The Black Kaizer is one of them and he will have to fight and shoot to survive. Directed by Jonas Âkerlund and written by Jayson Rothwell.

This film is a lot of fun, honestly, it doesn't delivery anything new at all, it is a very known kind of movie that doesn't change anything, but not every film needs to do that, right? The story in here is beyond simple, it is there just to justify the next actions, it is a concept better than anything, a nice and interesting one, not necessary makes sense, but if you don't think much about it, the notion will pull the rope into a fine place. The story is before anything else based on missions, during the film you see some missions that the hitman, Black Kaizer, did in his life and when he gonna reach 50 years old, his company will do anything to kill him, so after his last mission, we see him going under covered and a team trying to find him and kill him. While all of that the montage give us some flashes of something that at first it doesn't make any sense, you not sure if that is a flash foward or a flash back, they keep showing that all the time, you can realise that it is something that torments the character but not until the very end it does make sense, it give us a interesting plot twist, heavy and you can feel some tension, but the way how it was build up was ok, nothing very spetacular, but it is, again, a good twist. The narrative goes mostly in two ways, while showing the main character and stuff around him, it is more dark and raw, but when it changes to the team, it gets full cartoonized, with animation kill and crazy stuff, I like the idea, but how it was made i'm not so sure, there are some moments where they change to one and to another and the scenes in each one are so brief that feels wrong, all the time after some point it goes to crazy to dark, and when they do it, it should feel natural in both, but sometimes it does bother, but not all the time. This is that kind of film with hard sex, giant full of blood violence and drugs all the time, for those that enjoy this is for sure a full plate of fun. One problem with this film is the villain, the company boss, that kind of villain that is fat, have zero athleticism, is arrogant and thinks he is own control all the time, typical **** villain for this kind of film, I couldn't dislike this kind of character more, it is so boring and weak, I believe that they choose this kind of guy to be the villain because he is the completely opposite from what our main guy is, but it is so ridiculous, the character is in a top place in his work, and in every one of his scenes with Katheryn's character I was like, "how is this dumb guy is still on top with she around?" because he is so weak that I can't imagine how she would still be there, Katheryn's character would have knocked him out long time ago.

Mads Mikkelsen is really fun to watch, you can totally see that he put his time into his works and incorporate the character pretty fine and you believe in him, you can get angusty in his eyes, along with tranquility, wich makes sense, because he is already doing that for so long, even with all of that, it is possible to feel and see a traumatization by some of his old actions, it is a good interpretation of a not very original character. Katheryn Winnick doesn't have much to do in here, she kinda have some screen time, but what she gotta do is repetitive, in a lot of moments it seems that she is doing the same thing as her last scene, but still, she was ok, she didn't had much material to work with.

The action in this film is really good, it is brutal and combined with Mads acting just get better with time. We got a lot of gore scenes with penetrations and blood all the time. There are creativity in some moments and lack of it in others. There are a lot of moments where you can see that someone could have shot in him easily, but come on, right? There are a lot of badass moments for the character, there is one specifically in a cabin that it is really well done, combining the action with the speaking aspect and not being sure of where is who, it is relly raw and fun, there is one or another moment that doesn't made sense, but it was pretty good.

Polar is a very fun film, with hardcore sex, brutal and raw violence, and a concept that makes the story keep going, it isn't much original or different from other movies that are like this one, but it is definely a must watch for those who enjoy those aspects that I mention.