Mr. Right - 2015

The likability of the two main actors (Sam Rockwell as Francis and Anna Kendricks as Martha) aside, and the high quality of parody of action films (and especially hitman action films) that is lurking everywhere, Mr. Right suffers from the script disintegration that mars so many modern films. What seems to have been intended by some version of this story is that the relationship between Sam Rockwell's reformed hit-man and his frustrated Government Intelligence "handler" (played by Tim Roth) along with the hitman's immediate infatuation with a rather unusual girl he meets (Anna Kendricks) is supposed to mirror the relationship between family mobsters Richard Cartigan (Anson Mount) and little brother Von Cartigan (James Ransone) who appears to have a crush on fellow mobster Johnny Moon (Michael Eklund). While Tim Roth's identity-shifting (and accent-shifting) intelligence agent is trying to get renegade Francis back into the fold of gov't controlled lethal assassins and by doing so pleasing the so-called "Corporation" that is invisibly pressuring him and his work, a nebulous biological Father of the two brothers Richard and Von looms over the gangster operation they're trying to run in New Orleans, a situation that has the two "sides" perfectly mimicking each other. Additional mirroring is that Sam Rockwell's hitman's blood-spattered "reformation" (he has begun killing anyone who tries to hire him, because, as he tells them before pulling the trigger "murder is wrong") is accompanied by existential questioning of the meaning of a life that is accompanied by so much violence. This matches mob captain Richard Cartigan trying to stop running the family criminal business in New Orleans out of anger and spontaneous rage, to the extent he (hilariously) has a hectoring guru (Bruce, Cartigan’s consigliere played by Jaiden Kaine) in the room whispering to him to stay calm and count to ten before making lethal decisions to kill people.

This is a nice, goofy balance for Mr. Right's theme to rest upon, but it starts to wither away because the Cartigan characters are too little developed and the film hasn't the power to explore the theme and problem of murder which pervades so many scenes, finally settling into a vapid "its fun" video game attitude.

After a solid introduction, Richard Cartigan (Anson Mount) ultimately has no existence except for appearing in his elaborately set-designed office space and huffing and puffing in and out of rage, such that he's like a character in a video game, chained to a location and unable to exist but through a single expression. Little brother Cartigan gets more latitude and so does Johnny Moon, a sadistic evil gangster frighteningly well-played by Michael Eklund. But all of this points to what is the thinness of Mr Right as a film, that the character performances, and the very fine stunt work, fade into the sheer lack of meaning to this tale, as if the filmmakers are afraid of offending some hitherto pro-murder group in the audience. And that's an ironic result considering the dialogue is rich with self-questioning and the posturing of a yin-yang "flow" for understanding of the dynamics of life, and that understanding is used as an explanation for the superpower-level of Sam Rockwell's hitman to kill and not-be-killed in situations that look impossible to survive.

Anna Kendricks brings a fine comedic performance to Mr. Right and her story is about a young woman trying to reform, in her own way, how she chooses to be attracted to men (hence our title), and she has, like Sam Rockwell, enough energy and abundant dialogue to carry this film quite a ways. By the end, though, the filmmakers depend on this too much, and like ace jugglers appearing before an audience, eventually all that activity cannot hide that there's not much else on the stage.

Mr Right leans into a being a parody of hitman movies in some ways, but is too under made as a film to pull that off, falling into a split between meaning and not-meaning what it's doing, rendering the result rather banal.

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Original Page September 3, 2025