After a Bumpy Run in Cinemas, Josh Duhamel’s Chaotic Crime Movie Finally Finds Streaming Success

6 days ago 14

Josh Duhamel wears a black shirt and attends a red carpet

Britta DeVore is a Senior Author for Collider who has been known to dabble with Reality News as well.

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In a year packed with screamingly explosive action movies like Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another and Dan Trachtenberg’s Predator: Badlands, Allan Ungar’s return to filmmaking with London Calling flew under the radar. Two years after shoving Nicolas Cage and Joel Kinnaman into the maddest ride of their lives in Sympathy for the Devil, the director paired with Josh Duhamel for the much more classic comedy action flick. The title arrived in cinemas across the United States in September thanks to Quiver Distribution, but it came and went without much notice. However, thanks to its streaming release, the film is finally getting its due on Hulu, where it currently ranks ninth on the platform’s Top 15 in the U.S.

If you have been looking for a laugh-out-loud action film that blends plenty of family tumult into the plot and focuses on an incredibly flawed protagonist, London Calling is for you. When it comes to his job as a hitman, Tommy Ward (Duhamel) is just so-so. And, when it comes to his job as a father, Tommy Ward is also just so-so. The ex-pat has long called London his home, but when he accidentally offs the relative of the city’s biggest crime kingpin, Tommy is forced to flee the country and travel back to the U.S. where he lands a job in Los Angeles. His new gig is straightforward enough — take the boss’s socially awkward and un-street smart son on a few jobs until he gets the hang of things. In return, Tommy will be given safe passage back to London where he’ll be able to reunite with his own son. Although the task seems easy enough at first, it quickly turns into a life-risking mission that puts Tommy and his new tag along pal in harm’s way.

In addition to Duhamel, London Calling features performances from a familiar supporting cast that includes Jeremy Ray Taylor (It), Rick Hoffman (Suits) and Aidan Gillen (Game of Thrones). Since its arrival, both audiences and critics have been divided on how they feel about London Calling, with the former giving the project a 54% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes against the latter’s 48%.

What’s Next for Josh Duhamel?

After a year that, in addition to the wide release of London Calling, also saw Duhamel star alongside Greg Kinnear in Johnny Martin’s Off the Grid and Joe Carnahan’s true story-centered survival thriller, Not Without Hope. Next, he’s slated to both direct and star in a new comedy titled Preschool, which is also set to feature the talents of an ensemble cast that includes Michael Socha, Antonia Thomas, James Cosmo, Fenella Woolgar, and Charity Wakefield.