In the wake of the sickly box office figures for his last film, American Ultra, screenwriter Max Landis took to Twitter to have a little whinge. “Is trying to make original movies in a big way just not a valid career path anymore?”, he asked. “Are original ideas over?”
On the evidence of Mr Right, written by Landis, I’d say: yep. It’s a hitman comedy about a breakdancing contract killer (Sam Rockwell) who falls for kooky ‘work in progress’ Martha (Anna Kendrick). The killer’s tic? He only kills the people who employ him. Mr Right is Grosse Pointe Blank meets Dexter. Liman meets Tarantino. Derivative idea meets sloppy execution. My head met my hands.
Rockwell and Kendrick’s selling points – stoner loucheness for him, peppy weirdness for her – are a strange mix with the screwball tone. After their meet-cute in a convenience store (Martha knocks over a rack of condoms, he – thanks to lightening quick reflexes – makes them all safe) the getting-to-know-you stuff is oddly stilted considering they’re supposed to be the perfect match. The 16-year age difference between them plays into the uneasy chemistry. Both give it their best shot, both miss.
The dialogue is deep-fried cheese served in giant, clagging portions. The punchlines are often riotously off-key. In an early scene Martha, drunk after catching her boyfriend copping off with another woman, tries to coax her besties out for a restorative night on the town. “One of you hussies is getting fisted!,” she yells. At the press screening the resulting silence seeped into the soul. Tim Roth, playing a mercenary on the tail of Rockwell’s renegade, is one of the few who comes out of the fray intact. He’s got a great ear for dialogue and can make even the crappiest line chime. Once you’ve done Tarantino, sub-Tarantino isn’t that hard.
The exhausted ideas pile up with the bodies: the homoerotic relationship between the baddie’s henchmen, the technique by which the hitman stays a step ahead of everyone else (Tai Chi, basically), the appearance of a pseudo-sidekick who’s also pretty slick. Nothing’s developed past the cursory, everything is hackneyed. It’s not all Landis’s fault. The action sequences are fast, but not exciting. The editing flashy, but deadening. Set in New Orleans, the locations feel homogenised. Making reference to gumbo does not automatically give your setting spice.
Landis was right. The money people in Hollywood are probably more risk averse than ever. Ironically he has the skillset they’re looking for: he writes films that can be packaged neatly by referring to other movies. Blockbuster cinema does need more original ideas. It’s shame that Landis doesn’t seem to have any.
