POLAR

UK/Germany, 2019, 118 minutes, Colour.
Mads Mikkelsen, Vanessa Hudgens, Matt Lucas, Richard Dreyfuss, Johnny Knoxville.
Directed by Jonas Ackerlund.

Polar is based on a graphic novel and its main appeal will be to those who are avid devotees of such a novels. It is particularly graphic – more graphic than the average audience might want to watch. This means strong reservations in whether to recommend it to an audience or not.

However, the central idea has its interest. The action take place in a world of hired men and women who perpetrate hits throughout the world. They are part of a company. Mads Mikkelsen plays one of the last of the hitmen of his generation, turning 60, considered too old for his profession.

For Mikkelsen himself, it is something of a return to the style of film in Denmark, the violent Pusher series, in which he made his mark. He seems to be a conscienceless hitman, dressed in black, going into action with complete ruthlessness.

However, the head of the company, played as a caricature of a caricature by Matt Lucas, wants his associates to get rid of him. There are financial incentives involved, eliminating him and so not having to pay his pension. He has his own particular squad, international group, as well as his advisor, Vivian (Kathleen Winnick).

When the hitman goes to execute his target, he finds that he has been expected, that it is a set up, and that he is to be killed. However, with blood and gore and touches of torture, he escapes. He has used a prostitute and her son as cover to get into the hotel as well as to leave without suspicion.

He then challenges the boss, who lives in Chicago in a lavish mansion, with a very prim receptionist, with thugs galore to protect him as well as the sardonic Vivian ready to betray him as well as to warn him.

The first part of the action consists of the vicious squad threatening the hitman’s accountant, getting his financial papers, going to the various properties that he owns, interrogating residents who know nothing about it, protest their innocence, and are all slaughtered viciously – even filmed viciously.

In the meantime, the audience has seen him retiring to a small town in Montana, encountering a young woman who sells her dog to him, living quietly, even sympathetically. The young woman lives nearby and he buys her gifts. He also helps to train her in shooting a gun but she seems afraid and trembling.

Eventually, the death squad arrive, one of the women posing as a hapless driver broken down on the road, his taking her home, having a sexual relationship with her – and then the rest of the group come, guns blazing. In terms of graphic novel exploitation, the hitman’s ability to turn the tables on all his enemies is quite vivid. However, they abduct the girl.

This leads to confrontation in Chicago, the hitman getting into the building, eliminating the members of the death squad one by one, the rest of the boss’s thugs in corridors and stairwells, even the death of Vivian. Her captors have been filling the young woman with drugs to keep her sedated while the boss tortures the hitman, most explicitly (beyond the human torture even of The Passion of the Christ) and in great detail for three days.

His associates fleeing, the hitman confronts the boss – and, surprisingly, off-camera decapitating him although the head is projected out the window into a street close-up.

Actually, that is not the ending – there is an interesting twist. The hitman has had flashbacks to an occasion in New York City. The explanation is the girl who survived is the young woman in Montana, that he has paid for her education, has not recognised her, and she now wants to confront him and get her revenge. He is willing. But she cannot.

Had the film been edited for a lower classification, with the elimination of so much sadistic violence (masochistic for the audience), with the toning down of the sexual scenes and, perhaps, the amount of nudity as the hitman survives, it might have been a film for a wider audience.