Josh Duhamel is an actor who has had a mixed career thus far. He’s done some good things in the past, like Spaceman in 2016, but most of his career has been filled with not very interesting rom-coms and the occasional blockbuster, Transformers films. Littered with a few non descript action movies in between. London Calling, his latest film is another one of those action movies, but this one has a bit of a heartwarming story attached to it. One that will surely get audiences behind it. I was on board with it.

Tommy Ward (Josh Duhamel) is a hit-and-run in London. He is hired to kill a specific man and ends up killing another man because he was mistaken by the mask he was wearing. Unbeknownst to him, the young man he killed was the nephew of a prominent British gangster Freddy Darby (Aiden Gillen,  Game of Thrones). This causes him to leave London and move to Los Angeles. There, he works for an American gangster, Benson (Rick Hoffman), who has an issue with his son, Julian (Jeremy Ray Taylor), not being very manly as he perceives him to be. So he teams his son up with his hit-and-run to help him become more of a man. This is easier said than done.

Duhamel ‘s character has a family that he left in London when he had to flee for his own safety. A wife and a son, so taking this boy under his wing is a bit prophetic to him. At first, he doesn’t want the responsibility of looking after his boss’s son , but eventually, he comes around to the idea of teaching this kid the ropes of being a hitman. Little did he know the kid was clumsy, but  he does have some skills he can put to good use. They get a job to take out this crazy guy, but everything goes sideways as often happens in movies such as this. And unbeknownst to the Duhamel character, the kids’ father was trying to double cross him because of his past transgressions overseas.

Duhamel seems to be having fun with this role. He’s not taking it too seriously. That’s a good thing. The story is a bit comedic in nature. The rest of the cast aren’t taking their roles too seriously, either. Both Gillen and Hoffman seem to understand the material they’ve been given and are playing up the campy nature of the story. I’ve never seen Guillen do comedy before, but he’s pretty good at it. Hoffman, on the other hand, just comes across a bit over the top to me. I laughed at both of them throughout the movie. The Ray Taylor character seemed to be more of the straight character in the story. Even though he was clumsy and made mistakes, he had moments of doubt. Overall, I liked this cast, and Duhamel was pretty good in this.

There were a few good action scenes in this film. Mostly shootouts when hits went wrong or when certain characters were caught with nowhere to go and they had to find some clever way to escape or kill the opposition they were facing. There were a few car chases with the car Duhamel’s character owned, which was a classic orange Pontiac from the 60s. This car played a key part in the story. Quite a bit of the action, including the car chases revolved around this beautiful classic muscle car. I love it when a car like this plays a huge part in an action movie. The chases were cool, and the action was very well choreographed. Even though this was a lower budget movie, it didn’t skimp on the action that was in the film.

Jeremy Ray Taylor is a young actor I wasn’t familiar with before seeing him in this movie. He reminded me of a buddy of mine who is an actor to some extent. He had the vibes of a lot of kids I grew up with or knew when I was a young adult. The things he was involved in seemed right up my alley when I was that age. The bullying he went through was on par with my high school life as well. He is a spitting image of myself, except I didn’t play video games. He was really good in this role. I loved the father son aspect of the story. One father didn’t get who his son was, while the other character just enjoyed being around because his son is in a different country, miles away. It was a heartwarming story despite all the killing and bloody violence. This young actor is one to watch in the future.

London Calling, named after the popular song by the famous rock band the Clash, was a fun action film that didn’t take itself too seriously. It knew what it was and didn’t try to be something else.The director Allan Ungar kept the atmosphere very light, and the actors reciprocated. Duhamel, Ray Taylor, Gillen, and Hoffman were all pretty enjoyable to watch in this action comedy. The action scenes, gun fights, and car chases were all fun to watch. The various plots helped give the story some depth and meaning. The main subplots about father figures were quite emotional and very heartwarming. I genuinely cared about what happened to this man and teenager through the course of the film. This was a very surprising movie to me. It was much more enjoyable than I thought it would be. That’s a good thing. I love it when a movie surprises me like this one did. Hopefully, filmgoers will catch it when it comes out in theaters.

3 ½ stars

Dan Skip Allen