A Man Called Otto

Tom Hanks is trying to channel his inner Clint Eastwood for this US adaptation of Fredrik Bachman’s Swedish best-seller - the problem is, he simply isn’t grouchy enough. Previously adapted in Sweden as A Man Called Ove back in 2015, if anything Marc Forster’s film, scripted by David Magee, leans even more heavily into the story’s misty-eyed backstory even if Otto (Hanks) himself prefers regiment over sentiment.

Each day Otto patrols his small slice of the neighbourhood, grousing at those who let their dogs pee where they shouldn’t and resorting the recycling bins with a grabber. What isn’t immediately obvious, is that he is deeply grieving after the death of his wife - but plans for his own death do not run smoothly.

Just like the original Ove, Otto has a uniform unpleasantness that is unaffected by creed, colour or sexual orientation - he isn’t prejudiced against a single group, its “idiots” in general he can’t abide. While that does inch him away from the sort of characters Eastwood has been playing lately, this film still feels as solidly middle, small-c conservative American as it is possible to get - Otto might be misanthropic about everyone, but Magee seems to be weirdly judgemental about young people and their attitudes to an impending accident.

Also, Forster and Magee's handling of the suicide attempts lack the dark-edged humour of the original and, now drowned with additional sugar, they simply feel odd rather than affecting, despite Hanks best efforts.

Just before his attempts at ending his life are foiled, usually as a result of his new neighbours, Mexican Marisol (Mariana Treviño, the bright spot of the supporting roles) and her husband Tommy (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) and their kids, Otto has flashbacks to his younger years (when he is played by Hanks son Truman) with his wife Sonya (Rachel Keller). Forster leans into these with all his weight as though this is where his interest lies rather than the dramedy of the rest of the plot. Hanks is watchable as always but, after a career largely built on softer roles, its no cinch to convince as a grinch.

Where Holm’s film had a real flow of craft and framing to it that added to the deadpan element of the mood, Forster’s feels more like a grab-bag of things you’ve seen before, stuck together with sentiment.