London Calling review – Tarantino-esque caper in which a hitman takes a kid on work experience

This crime comedy has a neat character-based hook: a washed-up hitman has to take his gang-lord’s mollycoddled son under his wing and make a killer out of him. Fleeing to Los Angeles after botching a job in London, Tommy (Josh Duhamel) is desperate to get back to his family – so mafioso Benson (Rick Hoffman) makes him an offer. If Tommy can get Benson’s son Julian (Jeremy Ray Taylor) to man up, he will smooth the waters with Freddy Darby (Aidan Gillen), his opposite number over the pond whose relative Tommy accidentally offed.

Tommy has his work cut out: the kid’s a LARPer. Tearing Julian away from mates with foam swords and his current position as level three druid, the assassin gives him a work experience berth on his next murder. Benson assigns them to dispatch legendary hitman Alistair (Neil Sandilands), whose recent religious epiphany means he may be about to spill the beans on past crimes.

You have to give director Allan Ungar points for effort; London Calling is slathered in gags, sometimes carefully nurtured – like the one about Tommy refusing to accept his worsening eyesight. But this persistence also means, with far too much of the humour missing its mark, that the film staggers on like an unfunny standup comedian. It aims for amoral Tarantinoesque snark, but too often delivers scattershot puerility or lazy, self-satisfied writing. Ungar imitates the neon-lacquered John Wick style well, but lacks finesse in picking out comedy beats within the action.

Duhamel and Taylor, who have nice repartee, work the material as best as they can. At one point, posing as Russian mobsters, Julian advises Tommy to name Tolstoy as his favourite author; his boss mangles it as “Toy Story”. Taylor, who starred in the 2017 It adaptation, seems like a prospect; his relaxed affability wrings maximum irony out of this heinous apprenticeship. Much more so than Hoffman, who overplays as his dad, and the less said about Gillen WhatsApping it in as the family-fixated cockney kingpin the better. This underworld knockabout has its moments, but sharper writing could have lifted it way higher.

• London Calling is available on digital platforms on 7 October and on DVD on 13 October.