Review of Mr. Right
First, apologies to my subscribers for not posting for a while. I just had cataract surgery. Before that, my vision was less than optimal, and it was difficult for me to see a computer keyboard well enough to type. But I’m all better now, and I have several ideas for posts, both fun and serious. To start off, here’s one that’s fun.
So I saw Mr. Right. If you’re wondering why you haven’t heard of it, or wondering if you’ve missed the marketing – no, you haven’t missed anything, and you may not have heard of it because it was released in 2016 and did absolutely nothing in terms of domestic box office. I discovered it on Netflix, and I liked it so much I’ve watched it several times over the last few months. So I’m sharing my discovery with the world.
Sam Rockwell stars as the title character, so named by the roommate of Anna Kendrick, after she falls for him hard. He’s a semi-reformed hitman. “Semi-reformed” because he has decided that murder is wrong, and being a paid killer is particularly wrong. So, when someone hires him for a hit, he kills the person who hired him, rather than the intended target. This, of course, does not endear him to many people, and he has more than his fair share of enemies, even by the standards of international hitmen. He’s been able to get away with this bizarre ethical approach to murder because he’s incredibly good at taking out his opponents. He has a sort of sixth sense that tells him what’s about to happen just before it does. He’s also blessed with the kind of magic that only happens to hitmen in romantic comedies, the kind of magic that allows him to kill people in broad daylight and walk away without a care in the world, apparently not worrying about whether or not he will be caught. It’s a romantic comedy. Disbelief has to be suspended in the interest of chemistry between the two main characters.
Of which there is plenty. We don’t know anything about the profession of Anna Kendrick’s character, Martha, other than she is fascinated by paleontology, to the point that she refers to herself occasionally as a T. Rex. It’s a good thing Kendrick is in this role, because she’s one of the few people – maybe the only one – who can make a vicious and powerful predator seem adorable while being, you know, terrifying.
What we do know about Martha is that her romantic life is a mess, and that she’s not very good at dealing with it. Her roommate, who she’s known since college, has a very high level of tolerance for Martha’s social foibles, but even she has her limits.
Martha and Rockwell’s character (we barely know his name, because he doesn’t like it) bump into each other – literally – in a small grocery store. He immediately asks her out, which she – quite legitimately – finds a little creepy. Unbeknownst to her, his semi-magical intuition notices her. For him, it’s apparently love at first sight. For her, it takes a little longer, but not by much. His charm overcomes his slight creepiness, she agrees to go out with him, brings him home, and ends up sleeping with him – but not having actual sex! – in a matter of a few hours. The not-having-sex part somehow adds to the charm.
Being an internationally known hitman means, other than having very lethal enemies, that he also gets occasionally tangled up in other people’s nefarious plots. His former boss, played by Tim Roth, is on his trail, and there’s a subplot involving some New Jersey gangsters who are, for some reason, working out of New Orleans, where this takes place. So there’s some jazz, some gumbo, a funky/charming old mansion filled with guns and weirdos, and a couple of people with Southern accents. No beautiful femme fatales with Southern accents, which I think could have added a bit of flavor. There’s one woman with a gun early on, but she dies quickly, and there are no more women with guns. Except for one.
I’m a fan of this subgenre, romantic comedies with a crime element, where one of the main characters lives and plays on the wrong side of the law. The other main character is often on the right side of the law, and that tension presents an obstacle that they have to overcome. See: Out of Sight and Thomas Crown Affair. Sometimes the law-abiding half of the couple doesn’t carry a badge, and is just an innocent civilian. See: Grosse Pointe Blank. Regardless, the law-abiding person tends to stay on that side. Martha doesn’t know about her new beau’s unusual profession, despite the fact that he tells her, on one occasion, that he had to step away from their date to kill someone in the parking lot. She thinks he’s kidding. He’s not. She finds out that he wasn’t kidding. Not having the same ethical perspective as him, finding out what he really does leaves her very confused. Momentarily.
Kendrick clearly enjoys playing a character who is a tad psychotic. She also clearly enjoys playing a character who is adorable, but whose cuteness gets her into trouble, because she’s a tad psychotic. Trouble that she doesn’t know how to get out of, because being slightly psychotic tends to interfere with the ability to make good decisions. At least for her. Not for him.
He gets into trouble far, far worse than she does, but he, unlike her, knows how to get out of it. It doesn’t hurt that he gets himself into trouble intentionally. His ability to see what others can’t manifests in his ability to move very smoothly, putting himself, his hands, and his feet at exactly the right place at exactly the right time. We enjoy watching him move almost as much as she does. He can sense in her the same ability that he has, and offers to unlock it. With knives. Large kitchen knives. Which he throws at her. This sounds incredibly dangerous. And psychotic. Which, in any other movie, it would be. In just about any other movie – at least one not directed by Tarantino – throwing knives at your significant other would not be romantic. Normally, throwing knives at your significant other is the kind of thing that kills the mood. Which, in this movie, it does. Momentarily.
In almost any other movie, psychosis, cuteness, and charm would not have the same interdependent relationship. For these two, playing potentially lethal games together becomes the source of their mutual attraction, lets them see into each other’s souls, and gives us a source of wonderful onscreen chemistry.