Man, I got out to the movies a lot this past weekend. Makes up a bit for last weekend when I stayed home.
At any rate, how was The Hitman’s Bodyguard?
Rather standard, aside from the cast.
Professional bodyguard Michael Bryce (Ryan Reynolds) has it all. A highly successful business, a beautiful girlfriend in the form of an Interpol agent (Elodie Yung), and a Triple A rating. Then a client is killed on his watch, and he loses all of that. Two years later, he’s charged by his ex to bring a dangerous hitman, Darius Kincaid (Samuel L. Jackson), to The Hague to testify against a notorious dictator on trial for war crimes (that’d be Gary Oldman). Why is Kincaid doing this when it means he’s also giving up his own freedom? He’s doing it to make sure his foul-mouthed, foul-tempered wife (Salma Hayek) is granted immunity for whatever she’s in prison for. Now all Bryce has to do is get Kincaid to court before a deadline to make sure the dictator goes away, and there are a lot of dangerous people in their path.
As movies go, it was basically elevated by the comedic chemistry between Reynolds and Jackson, with a strong assist from Hayek in her limited screen time. Reynolds’ Bryce is a thorough planner who does everything by a certain set of internal rules. Jackson’s Kincaid is more bull-in-the-china-shop in his approach as he just does his own thing as he sees fit. The two obviously clash, particularly since they have a history together that saw them cross paths on opposite sides on multiple occasions. Beyond that, there isn’t a whole lot to recommend here. The comedy is mostly good, particularly a flashback where Kincaid recounts how he met his beloved wife, but the action scenes are rote if not occasionally hard to follow. This probably wouldn’t be a bad thing to see on cable, and I didn’t hate it, but given the other movies I’ve seen this weekend, well, it was a bit weaker than the others. Eight out of ten violent meet-cutes and that’s solely for Jackson, Reynolds, and Hayek.
The last couple of chase sequences were interesting, but the majority of this movie was horrid. I think Netflix must have edited out all the funny parts of this action-“comedy”.
And I know we have different styles when it comes to grading movies, but to give this an 8 out of 10 is an insult to any movie that has ever been graded 8 out of 10.
I like Jackson and Reynold’s chemistry and thought Salma Hayek was hilarious.