For all our coverage of Toronto International Film Festival 2017, click here.
Well, it was my first Toronto International Film Festival this year as Vanyaland film editor, and it was a tremendously crazy six days while I was up there. I saw a total of 22 movies, including some that I'll be writing about later, but what we've got for you today, to wrap up our coverage of the TIFF, is a collection of capsule reviews -- what we've dubbed "the rest of the fest." Some are notable and award-winning, others are absolutely miserable and worth running away from. We have new works from Joseph Kahn, John Woo, Brie Larson, Scott Cooper, and many others telling tales from all ends of the genre spectrum. Hey, this list even includes one of the best films I've seen all year, so check it out.
ManHunt
The TIFF program guide misrepresented this movie so badly that I thought I was in the wrong theater when the first wave of laughs started rolling throughout the aisles in at John Woo’s latest feature. What was advertised as a “pulse-pounding action-thriller” full of “character development [and] social critique…” is actually a pretty damn entertaining comedy that doesn’t let up after the first bonkers action sequence.
The story, adapted from a famous Japanese thriller from the 1970s, is simple enough: A famous lawyer is framed for a murder that he didn’t commit by the powerful corporation that he works for, and a cop ultimately begins to suspect his perp’s innocence over the course of the film. What you aren’t expecting are the super-solider female assassins, the bizarre revenge plots the juggling of languages, the overacting in each and every single one of them, and the wildest action sequences Woo has put to film since Face/Off.
People fly through windows and attack one another on motorcycles and have long crazy fistfights at a variety of ridiculous locations, including a giant genetic testing laboratory and, yep, you guessed it, a coop full of doves. It doesn’t always work — some of the serious bits kind of fall apart, and the final action sequence is a bit of a bust compared to what Woo hints it will be like throughout the start of the film — but it’s the most energetic and fun work that the master’s done since the turn of the century, and a truly perfect midnight movie. Welcome back, Mr. Woo. Nice to see you again.