(3 / 5)
Tom Hanks’ is a curmudgeon with a heart of gold in this English-language adaptation of Fredrik Backman’s Swedish bestseller A Man Called Ove.
Rechristened Otto for an American audience, we first encounter Hanks’ titular grouch at the hardware store. He wants a length of rope for a home DIY project and he’s brought his own knife to cut it to order; behaviour that the store staff understandably struggles with.
Rather than an erratic, flamboyant asshole a la Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets or even a gruffly irascible Walter Matthau-type, Otto might simply be described as “not suffering fools gladly”. The issue is that he sees everyone as foolish. His favourite word is “idiot”, muttered under his breath at the slightest provocation.
The store staff, who only work in metric where Otto has cut in yards? Idiots. The over-friendly, local fitness fanatic (Cameron Britton)? An idiot. The real estate agents from Dye & Merica who keep using Otto’s quiet, terraced street as a through-road? Idiots, idiots, idiots.
Otto’s neighbours are remarkably patient with his unpleasantness, patrolling the neighbourhood to aggrievedly impose order on bike racks and recycling bins. There seems to be a general understanding that it is born of unhappiness – Otto’s wife, Sonya, passed away some time ago and he has recently been laid off from his job of forty years.
Otto is a man who is done with life. His DIY project is a noose — but first he takes the time to cancel his utilities. The cutoff of his gas and water proves premature, however, when a new couple moves in across the street, Tommy (Manuel Garcia-Rufo) and the heavily-pregnant Marisol (Mariana Treviño), and immediately ingratiate themselves into his life.
Tommy may be a well-meaning idiot — he can’t park the moving trailer and doesn’t own an Allen key — Otto connects with Marisol, who calls him out on his unfriendliness. The repeated loaning of tools begets food in kind, and so, even as he makes repeated attempts to end his life, Otto finds himself inexorably drawn back into the business of living.
With his cropped, steel-grey hair and a shrewd look in his eye, this is Hanks playing vaguely against type – though, of course, Otto proves himself a profoundly, if reluctantly, decent human being.
David Magee’s screenplay takes care to show that, despite his brusque manner and lack of niceties, that Otto is not a bigot: he’s unquestioningly supportive of a transgender teen, Malcolm (Mack Bayda), one of his wife’s former students, who comes to him for help.
The faceless corporation of Dye & Merica makes for a convenient villain for the community to rally against, even if the film ultimately has to fall back on social media as a deus ex machina.
Hanks’ presence grounds the film, fully conveying the fervent principles that lie beneath the veneer of crankiness and bitterness. It’s only in flashback, in which Otto is played by Tom’s son Truman Hanks, it strays into schmaltziness, with a none-cuter meeting between Otto and Sonya (Rachel Keller) involving a dropped book on a train-station platform.
In these sequences, Matthias Koenigswieser’s crisp, faded cinematography takes on the golden hue of nostalgia. Thomas Newman’s score is relentlessly uplifting and melodic throughout.
Despite touching on themes of loss and suicide, A Man Called Otto is comfortably middle-of-the-road, which, you know, is where most of the traffic is. Even with Hanks’ always-compelling presence, it’s unlikely to trouble the academy, but if there’s a local cinema you love, and you happen to have a free afternoon and fancy some unchallenging fare, you could do worse.
