A man called Hanks makes the latest of his intriguing, midcareer choices in "A Man Called Otto."
Perhaps smarting from all the versions of the "How come you only play good guys" question that Tom Hanks has answered in his four-decade career, he has spent the past couple of years roughing up his nicest-man-in-Hollywood image. The heroic-but-gruff cowpoke in "News of the World," the vile manipulator in "Elvis," the cult leader in "The Circle" and even the selfish wood carver in "Pinocchio" — none of them are nice guys and a couple are straight-up evil.
Otto isn't evil, but from the opening sequence in which he disses a series of friendly neighbors, he's clearly no Forrest Gump or Mr. Rogers. The filmed adaptation of the popular Swedish novel "A Man Called Ove" may not be strictly necessary — it was already made into a decent Swedish film, retaining the original title, in 2015. But its reason for existence is that it adds texture to the story when someone who seems so nice plays a grump we're pretty sure will come over to the light side by the end of the movie.
