'Bad Day at the Office' Review: A Chaotic Action Thriller That Quickly Wears Thin
By Jack Ransom - October 30, 2026
A man with amnesia (John Hannah) wakes up in a wrecked hotel room next to a corpse, triggering a dangerous conspiracy. He and a maid (Radha Mitchell) try to recover his memories and evade the police to uncover the mystery and survive those pursuing them.
There was the opportunity to see Bad Day at the Office at an early 4DX screening a couple of weeks ago, but unfortunately, it wasn't possible to make it. Having now watched it at home, it feels like fate was looking down on me. Not only from a quality of the film perspective, but also the fact that I would’ve drowned in my own vomit and mostly likely suffered multiple headaches given the outlandish and exhaustive energy this film is working at.
It’s just a shame that at around the 30 minute mark it pretty much wears out its gimmick and then proceeds to be a noisy, repetitive and largely obnoxious attempt at at a love-letter to the far superior Crank films and Hardcore Henry. I say love letter, but this is a borderline rip-off in terms of its plot beats for Crank — heart rate monitor, a fatal drug ticking away at the life of the lead character who is struggling to remember what happened and hell, Karl even wears a Chev Chelios style tracksuit at one point and its presentation for Henry (entirely first person POV for every brawl, parkour section and lewd encounter).
The main issue is that where those aforementioned films scrape the 90 minute mark, this clocks in at just shy of two hours which is simply too long for the material. Around the halfway mark I really began to slip out of interest as the film falls into convolution, barraging flashbacks, team-ups and twists before tacking on an utterly stupid, bonkers and cackle-inducing “this is what’s really going on!” reveal, that unfortunately doesn’t save what came prior.
Make no mistake, there are *moments* where I found myself quite locked into the utter bad taste carnage on display (both the extended car park parkour sequence and the club toilet punch-up being a highlight) and fair play to the cast and filmmakers to committing to the gross, garishness of it all. The entirely first person POV is a commendable gamble given the lower budget, however it’s the equivalent of someone thrashing you around in a headlock or getting pushed down a flight of stairs when it comes to witnessing the action sequences.
Where Hardcore Henry excelled with its chaotic bloody, heightened sci-fi action choreography and flow this is the equivalent of Nick Frost crashing through the fence in Hot Fuzz. It’s messy, scrappy and surprisingly weightless with obvious digital muzzle flashes and lack of oomph to the fisticuffs. Some of the stunt work is impressive (particularly for the parkour) but a lot of it is marred by the presentation and constant splashes of neon pink font that crowd up the screen.
The cast are all locked into the craziness, but really it just comes down to bellowing, hamming it up and weirdly changing tones on the fly. John Hannah even finds himself sounding unenthusiastic when dubbed over the action at points and Radha Mitchell screams her head off throughout and Tamer Hassan appears geezering it up (though I’d lost interest at this point).
Bad Day at the Office could’ve been the Crank and Hardcore Henry successor we’ve been waiting for, unfortunately it is way too long for its material and central gimmick, the noisy-ness, grating tone and borderline incomprehensible action at points becomes very irritating. There are a few fun moments to be had, the cast are game and it’s ambitious in its ideas, but unfortunately poorly executed.
'Bad Day at the Office' is out now in cinemas following its release on October 30, 2026.
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Jack Ransom
Senior Writer
Jack loves to talk films: After a regular cinema trip, he likes to review them, rank them, react to them or even adding to his physical media collection!
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