Written by contributor Sophia Mattice
Victor Santos’s webcomic Polar is both a vivid homage to noir and pulp that carries the reader along with its strikingly drawn panels, and a cleverly styled example of expositional restraint. Speech bubbles weren’t added until Dark Horse Comics compiled the volumes into a graphic novel in 2013. The narrative of Polar Vol. 1: Came From the Cold follows Black Kaiser, aka Duncan Vizla, as he is betrayed by his former employers on the verge of his retirement and exacts revenge on his would-be assassins. With its sense of intrigue and danger, including dazzling pops of orange against black and white, Santos’s story already has a cinematic feel, so it was only a matter of time before it was adapted into a movie.
As a result, we have Netflix’s take on Polar, directed by Jonas Akerlund, and starring Mads Mikkelsen as the elusive Black Kaiser. Akerlund, besides directing a few full-length feature films, including the 2002 dark comedy Spun, has helmed a slew of music videos for performers from Madonna to Metallica, Taylor Swift, Rammstein, and more. Modulating the energy Akerlund transfers to his work with Santos’s stylish visuals sounds promising, and perhaps it would have worked if Akerlund and screenwriter Jayson Rothwell were able to grasp what makes Polar such an engaging read. Personally speaking, what makes the webcomic such a treat is that the lack of elucidation makes you piece the course of events together like a puzzle. What looks like enticing sheen on the full, glossy lips of a woman is actually the razor blade she hides in her mouth to slit the throats of paramours; the way Santos draws eyes in a single frame as characters stare each other down says more about the life or death situation they are entangled in than dialogue could.
The way the movie plays out, things aren’t so much lost in translation as flagrantly exposed, like an oblivious tourist drunkenly running down the street with his naked backside hanging out, convinced that he’s “mixing it up” with the locals.
It would be easy to sip one’s tea with pinky in the air while labelling this movie as crass, but that’s haughtily vague. Matthew Vaughn’s 2010 Kick-Ass is vulgar and a blast; Frank Miller’s Sin City (whom Santos pays tribute to in his webcomic) and subsequent movie are both entertainingly trashy. Akerlund and company push the throttle all the way to bombastic and for Polar’s nearly two-hour run time, it stays there. Gone are the brains, taciturn humour, and sense of mystery from Santos’s art. Instead we get a barrage of buxom beauties and hokey villains screaming, shooting, and sexing their way through environments that alternate between sterilely cold and overtly cartoonish. There aren’t characters in the film as much as there are caricatures: femme fatale (Katheryn Winnick), sexy nympho (Ruby O. Fee), endangered waif (Vanessa Hudgens), hammy bad guy (Matt Lucas), gruff former mentor (Richard Dreyfuss), so on and so forth. Explicit sex scenes and violence are lobbed at the viewer as if it were parade candy we’re supposed to scramble after, but it all amounts to nothing, like packing peanuts encased in bubblegum wrappers.
As for our leading man, I’ve been partial to Mikkelsen since seeing him wipe away blood tears with sinister casualness as Bond villain Le Chiffre in 2006’s Casino Royale. He brings an air of gravitas to his every role, whether he’s disemboweling opponents as One Eye in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Valhalla Rising or playing scientist Galen Erso, extorted for his knowledge and regretful of his forced separation from his daughter in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. It’s too bad that he is wasted in Polar, and frankly looks bored. Whether he’s in a marathon sex session or beating down henchmen, he has an air of clinical detachment that doesn’t gel with the movie’s cacophonous temper.
Those who haven’t read the webcomic might derive pleasure from what some would say is dumb fun, but for me Polar is a bungled opportunity. Do yourself a solid and go to the source.
