MR RIGHT (2015)

Genre: Action/Comedy
Director: Paco Cabezas
Cast: Sam Rockwell, Anna Kendrick, Tim Roth, James Ransone, Anson Mount, Michael Eklund, RZA
Runtime: 1 hr 35 mins
Rating: M18 (Coarse Language And Violence)
Released By: Cathay-Keris Films 
Official Website: 

Opening Day: 21 April 2016

Synopsis: Martha (Anna Kendrick) discovers that her new beau, Francis (Sam Rockwell), is a professional assassin… with a cause. He kills the people ordering the hits. As the bodies pile up, Martha must decide whether to flee or join her man in the mayhem.

Movie Review:

If there is one thing that ‘Mr Right’ gets right, it is in casting Sam Rockwell and Anna Kendrick as the romantic couple at the centre of this screwball rom-com-slash-hitman movie. Oh yes, Rockwell, whom we loved in ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ hasn’t had a role this delightfully kooky in years; while Kendrick, who charmed our socks off in ‘Pitch Perfect’, nails what could easily have been a caricatured neurotic routine beautifully, right down to her garrulous patter and lightning mood swings. And together, Rockwell and Kendrick simply light up the screen, exuding a rapturous effervescence falling in love with each other and shooting dead all who stand in their way.

Unfortunately, they are also the only thing that this candy-coloured carnival of violence and humour has going for it. In particular, a dark premise like this needs both sharp writing and direction, neither of which writer Max Landis (best known for the over-hyped ‘Chronicle’) and director Paco Cabezas offer. The set-up is disappointingly ho-hum, including a grade-school prelude where a young girl named Martha tells the camera that she wants to grow up to be a T-Rex, a cartoonish break-up where the now grown-up Martha (Kendrick) catches her boyfriend cheating on her, and a lovelorn phase where she hides in closets, dances with abandon at parties and sets free a rabid cat at the pet shop where her roommate works. It’s meant to be funny while getting us to empathise with Martha, but there’s hardly a chuckle to be had.

Francis’ (Rockwell) introduction is just as uninspiring. His first kill we see is a middle-aged woman in a hotel room who had apparently hired him to take out her husband, whereupon we learn how he is not some ordinary hitman but a reformed one who enforces his own moral code of taking out those paying for such assassinations. That however puts him at odds with his former mentor Hopper (Tim Roth), who after sitting out a disastrous ambush in the same hotel’s dining room decides to take matters into his own hands and spends the rest of the movie trying to finish Francis off by himself. If you’re expecting a bang, well let’s just say that Cabezas’ staging feels utterly monotonous, especially a sequence where Francis is meant to show off his lightning-quick reflexes and tango-style moves against a roomful of armed assailants.

Their meet-cute happens in a convenience store while knocking over a rack of condoms, and in between traversing across New Orleans on dates, Martha discovers a knack for catching knives in the air while Francis gets unwittingly entwined in a plot by a pair of gangsters (James Ransone and Michael Eklund) to take out their big brother (Anson Mount). Rather than lie about what he does, Francis tells Martha that he’s a killer right from the start; though the latter regards his casual references to killing people as a joke until he sees her shoot someone on a bridge right in front of her eyes. It’s a neat twist no doubt, but is quickly buried underneath an unnecessarily convoluted plot involving said Jersey mobsters as well as other stupid characters such as RZA’s kindhearted gunman who has the general misfortune of being given lousy weapons.

If not for Rockwell and Kendrick, the subsequent display of nihilistic violence as Francis confronts both the people who have set him up as well as the person who trained him up at the same time will no doubt turn out ingratiating and even ludicrous, not least for the fact that Kendrick’s character becomes an even more unhinged person than Francis after she is bound to a chair and threatened with her life. That we remain engaged and amused is to their credit, both individually and together, and it is no overstatement that they pretty much carry the movie through to its somewhat clichéd ending promising more ‘Mr and Mrs Smith’-like adventures in Asia. They are a killer couple all right, and in ‘Mr Right’, there’s no doubt that they kill it. 

Movie Rating:

(Sam Rockwell and Anna Kendrick make a killer couple in this screwball rom-com-slash-hitman movie, but are somewhat undermined by a dull script and weak direction)

Review by Gabriel Chong