‘Bad Day at the Office’ Puts John Hannah Inside a First-Person Action Thriller
‘Bad Day at the Office’ Puts John Hannah Inside a First-Person Action Thriller
John Hannah is having considerably more than a bad day in Bad Day at the Office, a new action thriller from director Chee Keong Cheung that unfolds entirely from a first-person perspective.
The film stars Hannah (The Mummy) alongside Radha Mitchell, Tamer Hassan and Lana Parrilla, placing audiences directly inside an escalating mystery built around amnesia, murder and a citywide pursuit.
Hannah plays Karl, who awakens inside a wrecked hotel room suffering from a severe headache and with no memory of what happened, where he is or even who he is.
Things become considerably worse when he discovers a dead body in his bathtub.
With two police officers soon arriving at his door, Karl is forced into action alongside hotel maid Molly, played by Mitchell. Their attempt to understand what happened quickly expands into a larger conspiracy as Karl discovers there is a price on his head and seemingly no shortage of people willing to collect it.
Without access to his memories, Karl must instead rely on skills he doesn’t remember acquiring as he and Molly attempt to survive long enough to uncover what caused his memory loss and why so many people want him dead.
The biggest distinction for Bad Day at the Office is how Cheung presents that action.
The movie was shot entirely in first person, using GoPro cameras to present events through the perspectives of its protagonists and antagonists. Fights, chases and explosions consequently unfold from inside the action rather than through a traditional third-person camera.
It’s an approach immediately reminiscent of Hardcore Henry, with the production also citing the frantic action of Crank, the first-person experience of Call of Duty and the crime-film energy of Guy Ritchie’s Snatch among its influences.
For Hannah, the film represents a different kind of leading role. Known to many genre audiences for his performance as Jonathan Carnahan in The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, Hannah is placed at the center of a much more physically driven action vehicle here.
Bad Day at the Office held its world premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, where it opened the festival’s Midnight Madness section.
The project also continues Cheung’s work in action filmmaking following Son of the Soil, his UK-Nigerian action feature. That film recently received four awards across the Toronto International Nollywood Film Festival and Brampton International Nollywood Film Festival, including honors for international directing and action/thriller filmmaking.
Cheung’s Action Xtreme is also partnering with Idris Elba’s 22Summers and Nile Media on a planned slate of West African action films. The first project is expected to begin production in the fourth quarter of 2026 with Cheung directing.
With Bad Day at the Office, however, the immediate focus is on putting viewers directly behind Karl’s eyes as a seemingly straightforward murder mystery explodes into a fight for survival.
For Karl, figuring out who he is may be difficult enough.
Staying alive long enough to get the answer could be considerably harder.
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