Polar (2019)

Mads Mikkelsen and Vanessa Hudgens’ on-screen chemistry bring some much-needed heart to Polar’s bloodsoaked story.

The film’s horniness and amorality, a slap in the face of fanatically cautious contemporary mores, might’ve been more shocking if it weren’t placed so firmly in quotation marks.

Polar is pure trash, but the generousness — and, in the final stretch, the poignancy — with which Mikkelsen approaches even the most lurid of the film's conceits at least pushes it toward the top of the garbage heap.

Every second grates and confuses in equal measure, with nary a thrill of inventive, exciting action filmmaking to break up the monotony.

Each assassination sequence is so ridiculously protracted and inefficiently constructed that it would make a good running gag if the violence wasn’t the one thing the film seemed to take seriously.