“Grumpy old bugger gets a new lease on life” is a well-worn trope, to be sure, but let’s face it: a) it works and b) it helps when the grumpy old bugger in question is screen legend Tom Hanks. So, if you’re keen to see Hanx learn some late-life lessons, you’re in luck: A Man Called Otto is hitting cinemas on January 6.
Directed by Marc Forster (Finding Neverland, Quantum of Solace), A Man Called Otto may sound familiar because it’s an English-language remake of the acclaimed Swedish film A Man Called Ove, which was in turn based on the hit novel of the same title by Fredrik Backman.
This latest iteration relocates the action from Stockholm to Pittsburgh, where Hanks is the titular Otto, a curmudgeonly neighbourhood terror whose hardened exterior masks a deep depression. Otto really wants to off himself, but when new neighbours arrive in the form of Mexican immigrant Marisol (Mariana Trevino), her husband Tommy (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) and their two young daughters. Otto resists as hard as he can, but it isn’t long before he finds himself drawn into their lives.
Which is pretty rote, if we’re being honest, but sometimes it’s the way you blow up a bridge, to paraphrase Sam Peckinpah, and having the former Forrest Gump in the lead role goes a long way. Previously perennially youthful, Hanks is very much an elder statesman now, but even when he’s playing dour that effervescent charm shines through. This kind of role gives him plenty of opportunities to let old Otto’s heart of gold shine through his gruff exterior – look, he even adopts a stray cat! As the chaos of Christmas and New Year fades into the background and we all struggle to get up to speed for 2023, A Man Called Otto looks like just the cockle-warming ticket for fans of feel-good films.
