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I generally dig Kevin Hart. I generally dig Woody Harrelson. I generally dig the flicks of director Patrick Hughes (“Red Hill” is a cool neo-Western and sue me – “The Expendables 3” and “The Hitman’s Bodyguard” are fun.). I definitely did not dig “The Man from Toronto,” which is now available to stream on Netflix and on which all three men toiled.
Hart stars at Teddy, a down-on-his-luck fitness entrepreneur married to Lori (Jasmine Mathews of last year’s “The Tomorrow War”). Teddy screws up so often that when others mess up his friends and family tell them they, “Teddy’d it.” (My wife and I have a friend named Modar who suffers from a similar predicament. She herself refers to blunders as, “Modar’ing it.”)
Lori’s birthday is right around the corner and Teddy wants to do something special for her, so he rents a cabin in rural Virginia for a weekend getaway. Due to a toner issue with his printed directions, Teddy winds up at the wrong residence where he’s mistaken for “The Man from Toronto” (Harrelson, not sounding remotely Canadian), an anonymous hatchet man who’s been dispatched for and expected to perform some wetwork. (Teddy’d it!)
Government officials insist Teddy maintain his cover as “The Man from Toronto” for some reason or another (I watched this less than a week ago and can barely remember it), but leave the handsome (according to my wife and the movie) Agent Santoro (Cuban singer and telenovela actor Jencarlos Canela) to look after Lori … much to Teddy’s jealousy and dismay. Also on hand to distract Lori is her best friend Annie (Kaley Cuoco), who frequently voices her annoyance at Teddy’s screw-ups.
Teddy must team with “The Man from Toronto” (real name: Randy) when Randy’s handler (Ellen Barkin, mostly just barking her lines into a phone) has them both marked for death and sics “The Man from Miami” (“The Bold and the Beautiful” vet Pierson Fode) and “The Man from Tokyo” (Tomohisa Yamashita, late of HBO Max’s “Tokyo Vice”) on ‘em.
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