Rating: R | Runtime: 114 minutes
Release Date: September 19th, 2025 (USA)
Studio: Quiver Distribution
Director(s): Allan Ungar
Writer(s): Omer Levin Menekse and Quinn Wolfe & Allan Ungar

A man solves his own problems.

Tommy Ward (Josh Duhamel) is a hitman. Some might even say the best in London. Well, maybe that he was the best in London. He’s crested fifty now and his eyesight is failing, but the stubborn machismo that ultimately forced his ex-wife to divorce him and take sole custody of their son has him refusing to admit this very simple truth. Because he might still be the best if he just got glasses. It’s 2025, after all. Is the stigma so extreme that he’d risk his own life to avoid someone calling him “four-eyes”?

Sure, director Allan Ungar and his co-writers Omer Levin Menekse and Quinn Wolfe would have you believe that the message at the back of London Calling is confronting your mortality with humility, but I’m not sure they needed such an ableist conceit to get there. And to those throwing their arms in the air to say I don’t have a sense of humor … I had a very fun time with this film. It’s enjoyable, heartfelt, and nicely acted. I probably wouldn’t have even mentioned that bit of ablism if not for the really bad case of hinging an entire scene on the R-word.

It’s not just a slip to comment on a character being a jerk either. It’s genuinely used as a joke about the mentally disabled and is exacerbated as the sequence continues. This isn’t a period piece. I wasn’t being facetious about it being 2025 outside the movie. It’s 2025 inside the movie. So, what’s really going on here? Give Tommy a hand tremor due to a guilty conscience instead. It wouldn’t ruin the narrative comedy that works well, and no one would miss the one-dimensional “we’re not PC” comedy that doesn’t.

How do I know this? Because Tommy still isn’t wearing glasses during the final battle. He has been called out on his vanity and even uses corrective lens for a previous fight to discover they do make a huge difference and give him back all the confidence and power he’s missed the past year. To let Tommy have that reaction and then never confront it for the rest of the film is all the proof you need to know his humility wasn’t the point. It was always for the gag. Beyond realizing he wants to be a good father, Tommy doesn’t evolve one bit.

As I said before, however, it’s still entertaining. Duhamel is too charismatic a “tough guy” for it not to be. Get him to do one last job before returning to England from exile in Los Angeles (he accidentally killed a family member by marriage of his boss, played by Aidan Gillen, and thus had to flee) by forcing him to babysit his new boss’s (Rick Hoffman’s Benson) LARP-loving nerd of a teen son Julian (Jeremy Ray Taylor) and the situational comedy writes itself. Tommy gets a trial run at fatherhood and Julian learns what a real dad is.

Are these lessons happening while they hunt down a mark? You bet. Does it help that said mark is a former assassin with an ungodly kill count? Not really. This isn’t John Wick insofar as being a mythologized world only populated by killers, but it takes place within a corresponding reality-based sector to prevent murder from being a sign of evil. It’s merely a way of life. Heck, it’s not even a big enough sin for Alistair Mcrory (Neil Sandilands) to know an assassin will be going to Hell upon death. No, you must commit suicide to guarantee that trip.

Julian isn’t even surprised his dad makes a living as a crime boss paying people to kill enemies. It’s the family business and this little ride along is Benson’s last-ditch effort to know whether that legacy will die with him or get passed on. Does Julian want to follow in those footsteps? He never really says. Nor does the film care since the whole ordeal demands shallowness for laughs. Because it is legitimately funny to realize Benson wants his son to be a stone-cold killer yet never even took him shooting. It’s hilarious that Fortnite made him a crack shot anyway.

But again, that revelation doesn’t go anywhere. It’s another missed narrative opportunity like the glasses since Tommy should be letting the kid shoot for him after discovering he can’t miss. Julian instead only provides cover fire. It makes absolutely zero sense. That’s the name of the game, though, when cheap entertainment trumps good storytelling. It’s merely a shame that filmmakers don’t realize you can do both because I think London Calling is a perfect premise to prove it if only Ungar and company went the extra step.

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[L-R] Jeremy Ray Taylor as “Julian” and Josh Duhamel as “Tommy Ward” in the action comedy LONDON CALLING, a Quiver Distribution release. Photo courtesy of Quiver Distribution.