Netflix’s The Man from Toronto is an action comedy that follows a case of mistaken identity. When a washed up fitness sales executive (Kevin Hart) gets mistaken for the titular international criminal, his life flips upside down. However, the situation gets worse when the real Man from Toronto (Woody Harrelson) comes looking for him.
Plot Summary
Teddy Jackson (Hart) is a loveable screw up who works as a sales guy for Marty’s gym. He uploads videos online promoting outlandish fitness ideas which are borderline dangerous.
On his wife Lori’s (Jasmine Mathews) birthday, he books a cabin in Onancock, Virginia for a romantic getaway but before that, goes to talk Marty about his brilliant business idea — no contact boxing.
The gym owner is bewildered at the concept and berates Teddy about the flyers he made as they don’t have the gym’s address or phone number. To make Teddy’s day worse, he ends up firing him.
Elsewhere, we are introduced to Randy aka the Man from Toronto (Harrelson), a dangerous criminal who specialises in torture. On an assignment, he extracts information from a man with just his terrifying words.
Teddy comes back home but doesn’t tell Lori that he’s out of a job and the two prepare to leave. Meanwhile, Toronto gets a call from his handler who assigns him a two phase information extraction job worth a million dollars each, also in Onancock.
The couple arrives at the destination and Teddy leaves Lori in a day spa for two hours. He then goes to check out the cabin to make sure it is perfect before his wife arrives.
Unfortunately, due to the reservation page being blurry, Teddy drives towards the wrong cabin which turns out to be the one where Toronto is supposed to carry out the extraction. The person who greets Teddy mistakes him for the criminal and clicks his picture to send to his superior.
Teddy, unaware of the situation, checks out the cabin and is shocked to find a beaten and tied-up man in the basement. Realising that there has been a mistake, Teddy plays along for the fear of his life and subtly tries to convince the hostage to speak up lest they both be killed.
As he acts the bad guy, he somehow manages to extract the information — which is a code — but the FBI raid the place before any further developments can take place. The Feds talk to Teddy and reveal that they know he’s not the criminal.
They let him know that his picture was sent to a Venezuelan Colonel Sebastián Marín by the man who let him into the cabin. The Colonel is a wanted man as he staged a coup to overthrow his own government. It was prevented by the US intelligence but he escaped with his wife.
The Man from Toronto was the only way to bring out Marín. They request Teddy to continue acting like the criminal and meet the Colonel in Washington DC the next day. After being told that there are lives at stake, he agrees but asks for a few tax and debt related favours in return.
Furthermore, Toronto arrives at the scene a bit too late and does some hacking to discover Teddy’s identity. Meanwhile, an FBI agent is stationed with Lori to escort her to DC for a shopping spree.
The next day in DC, Teddy is briefed, fitted with a tracker and sent to meet up with Marín’s associates. Toronto arrives and observes the situation as well. Unaware of the second phase, Teddy is shocked to find that he’s to fly to Puerto Rico to extract information from another target before he can meet the colonel.
Toronto hijacks the car of the agent overseeing Teddy, chucks him out and follows Marín’s party. He shows up to confront Teddy mid-flight and amid the confusion, a fight ensues which nearly kills everyone.
However, Toronto uses his skills to eliminate everybody except Teddy who reveals that he’s genuinely stuck in this due to bad printer ink. They land the plane in Puerto Rico and Toronto threatens Teddy to continue with the facade and get information from the second target, Mr. Green.
If you still have doubts about the ending, here’s a full breakdown.
The Man from Toronto ending explained in detail:
Thumb wars
Toronto prepares Teddy for the extraction and gives him an ear piece to wear. Teddy goes into a conference room inside a hotel where he meets the captor who has four hostages.
Teddy, posing as Toronto, is asked to use his techniques and figure out who Green is among them, which he succeeds in doing with Toronto instructing him in his ear. However, the people notice the ear piece and get aggressive but Toronto walks in and shoots everyone.
They then talk to Green who reveals that his partner — who was captured in Onancock — and him worked for DARPA (Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency), developing untraceable seismic explosives.
Two years prior, their former boss, General Hanson recruited them again to help in a top secret project for an elite client who was Marín. They had plans to bomb the Venezuelan embassy in Washington which led to Green and his partner installing fail-safes for the detonator — a coded sequence and Green’s thumb print.
Toronto doesn’t kill Green after hearing this but chops off his thumb. Teddy is shocked but before they can go further, they are attacked by the Man from Miami, another assassin sent in by the handler to ensure the completion of the job.
After a prolonged shootout sequence, they manage to secure the thumb and fly back to Washington to meet with Marín. The handler calls Toronto to enquire about the job and Teddy, from his years of sales experience, senses that she lied to him. His warning however falls on deaf ears.
On the plane, Toronto calls Teddy out for being a coward and never following through with things he sets his sights on. He even warns him that the wife he is so desperate to get back to may leave him some day if this continues.
Fireworks
In DC the duo goes to meet Lori for dinner who is with her friend Anne (Kaley Cuoco). The latter shows interest in Toronto who allows himself to be a little calm. He reveals that he’s always wanted to be a chef and to open a high-end restaurant but fears it won’t be good enough.
As they start dancing, Teddy notices Miami again and runs with Toronto to the back of the restaurant. Miami confirms Teddy’s suspicions that the handler sent him in worrying that Toronto has done another Minnesota.
In the fight that follows, Miami manages to steal the thumb as the Feds, who have been watching Teddy since he arrives at the restaurant, finally move in. However, Teddy and Toronto steal a police car and drive to the meet-up with Marín.
In the car, Toronto reveals that in Minnesota, he was hired to kill a chronic gambler who owed a lot of money to the wrong people. He was close to pulling the trigger when he noticed a kid in the car.
Thinking about how witnessing his grandfather’s death at the hands of a bear made him into a stone cold murdered, he decided to let the target go and break the cycle. In the present, Toronto promises that he won’t let anyone die tonight. He just wants the money so he can open a restaurant and opt out of this dangerous life.
Teddy agrees to switch identities with him for one last time. At the Monarch hotel, Miami and the handler meet Marín and give him the thumb. The opening ceremony of the Venezuelan embassy gets underway but before Marín can blow it up, Teddy shows up as Toronto, claiming that Miami and the handler are frauds.
As Teddy continues his blabbering, the FBI infiltrate the room and put an end to the conspiracy. In the ruckus, Toronto takes the money and escapes. The Feds escort Teddy back home but Lori finds out the truth about his job and leaves him a message that she needs some space.
Meanwhile, Teddy also finds out that the thumb belonged to one of the captors who Toronto killed and not Green, proving that the bomb wouldn’t have gone off anyway.
Rogue assassins
The handler calls Toronto and warns him to bring the money back. He refuses and she sends multiple assassins after Teddy. The next day, Lori texts Teddy that she’s catching a train to her mom’s and he runs to the station to stop her.
Unfortunately, he is confronted by Miami who attacks him for Toronto’s whereabouts. Luckily, Toronto shows up to save Teddy and knocks Miami out. Their day just gets worse from there as more assassin’s show up.
Toronto and Teddy rush inside Marty’s gym and an all-out battle ensues. After a stunning one shot fight sequence, the duo manages to defeat all the assassins but the handler herself shows up with a grenade launcher, demanding her money.
They run for their lives and enter a factory where they hit a dead end on a ramp over steaming boilers. The handler closes in with a gun and Toronto hands her the keys to his car Debora, stating that the money is in the trunk.
Meanwhile, he quietly tells Teddy to pull a lever nearby which causes the floor under the handler to retract, dropping her into a boiler and killing her. However, there is a gas leak inside the factory owing to multiple gunshots and it explodes, throwing the duo out.
Teddy comes clean that despite all the killing, this experience has pushed him to be a better man. Before he can rush to stop Lori however, the Man from Tokyo shows up, asking for Toronto. However, he is nowhere to be seen but drives in with Debora to run over the Japanese assassin.
He hands Teddy the car to go stop Lori as the police closes in. In a rush he accidentally parks the car in the middle of a railway crossing and runs to apologise Lori, telling her that he needs her.
Meanwhile, the train arrives and crushes Debora, leaving crumpled metal in its wake. As Lori and Teddy look on horrified, the police apprehend Teddy. The plot then experiences a time jump to a year later.
Lori is pregnant, Anne is dating Toronto and they all dine in his new high-end restaurant. Teddy hands him the first down payment for his car and Toronto, still bitter about Debora, tries to choke him.
The film ends with Teddy running a successful no contact boxing class called Teddybox as Toronto calls him during a live session and expresses his bitterness about Debora’s destruction once again.
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