Out of the Wilderness

The first thing I noticed about this movie, just in the first 10 minutes, is the editing. I don’t know if they rushed the whole production process or didn’t have enough money in the budget, but with another pass or two before locking in the final film someone would have caught the errors. Or at least, they should’ve! So as trivial as it sounds, these handful of editing mistakes (or overlooks) affected me right away.

Humor. Was the movie funny? I guess I forgot to laugh. I am not exaggerating when I say I didn’t laugh more than 3 times. With Kevin Hart in an action/comedy, you’d expect some laughs, right? The disappointing part in regards to the comedy (or lack of) is that I sincerely believe they tried to include humor. Maybe that’s more of a reflection of the bad writing than the acting. In fact, it’s on display most when Kevin Hart’s character (who is trying to sell himself as the assassin in the movie) drops his knives under the table where those he’s interrogating sit. He bends down, gathers the knives, pops back up and as intimidating as he can try to be asks, “Guess who’s back?” That’s funny because everyone knows the answer is that he’s back. He only disappeared 5 seconds earlier to get the knives. But then a few beats after asking the question, he answers it. “Me. I’m back.” Eye roll.

If I’m being harsh, at least I’m not alone. The Rotten Tomatoes reviews are not so encouraging.

Final Thoughts. I suffered through this movie so you don’t have to. A few scenes notwithstanding, this was one of the least enjoyable Netflix movies. There wasn’t much comedy. If you treat it as an action movie, there wasn’t a whole lot of that either. Woody Harrelson’s assassin character was boring, too.

If you’ve seen it, chime in with your thoughts below. Thanks for dropping in!

-Out of the Wilderness