SEPTEMBER 6, 2017
To the surprise of many Hollywood watchers, “The Hitman’s Bodyguard” was #1 at the box-office over Labor Day weekend, only the third 2017 release to achieve that distinction. The action-comedy, starring Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson, was not expected to do that well in pre-release tracking, and if truth be told, it is still not making the kind of cash that you would expect a #1film would generate — it’s just that everything else is doing worse.
The trailer for the film has been playing in theaters all spring, and I have to say that the sight of Jackson and Reynolds bickering like an old married couple just tickled me, and I definitely put it on my “must-see” list. The largely negative reviews surprised me because…hey. it’s Sam & Ryan…how bad could it be?
It’s not terrible, but it’s not good either.
“The Hitman’s Bodyguard” is one of those European action thrillers set there thanks to tax breaks, and it has the same kind of rote storytelling shared by most of these movies. All the bad guys are Eastern European as usual and they’re all dressed in black, also as usual. It seems that Vladislav Dukhovich (Gary Oldman), the murderous despot of Belarus, a country where, I suspect, “The Hitman’s Bodyguard” won’t be playing, has been finally brought up on charges in The Hague. The only problem is that all of the potential witnesses set to testify against Dukhovich have all wound up dead. Funny, that.
There’s only one potential witness who can end Dukhovich’s reign of terror — notorious hitman Darius Kincaid (Samuel L. Jackson) who is being held by Interpol in a Manchester prison. Agent Amelia Roussel (Élodie Yung) is assigned to lead a squad of Interpol agents to escort Kincaid to The Hague safely, but they are ambushed early in their journey, with everyone killed except Roussel and Kincaid. Realizing that Interpol has been infiltrated by a mole, Roussel realizes that she needs someone completely unaffiliated with the agency — her ex-boyfriend and disgraced bodyguard Michael Bryce (Ryan Reynolds).
Bryce had been a top-of-the-line bodyguard until a client was mysteriously shot once he got onto a plane, and Bryce has always blamed his ex for leaking his client’s name. Now his star has fallen, he is reduced to protecting cocaine-filled corporate executives. Bryce answers Roussel’s call complete with his weaponry and a bagful of grudges. But when he finds out that the client he has to protect is Kincaid, with whom he has a history, the two spend their first minute together trying to kill each other. Bryce reluctantly agrees to take the job, and their journey starts off well enough but, as they say, complications ensue.
Director Patrick Hughes, whose last film was “The Expendables 3” is definitely a member of the more-is-more school of directing. There’s not one but two 10-minute chases here, either one of which could be lost without harming the film. The whole enterprise, in fact, is bloated, and even though the film runs less than two hours, it feels like forever. The film isn’t helped by an overly chatty script by Tim O’Connor. It’s the kind of film where the story momentum just begins to start building up when Bryce asks Kincaid, “How did you and your wife meet?”, and we are swept away on a five-minute irrelevant flashback in which we not only see the meeting, but we have described to us verbally what we’re actually seeing. (Screenwriting 101: show or tell, but not both.) And then Kincaid turns around and asks Bryce the same thing! Just bad.
But let’s face it — we’re all really there for the Sam & Ryan Show, and in that, the two stars do not disappoint. Even if several of O’Connor’s one-liners miss by a mile, Jackson and Reynolds are two of the few action stars who can deliver a one-liner with the same aplomb as the most skilled comedian. Kudos too to the wonderful Salma Hayek who’s an absolute hoot as Jackson’s equally profane wife Sonia. The trio almost…almost… makes the movie worth watching.
But if “The Hitman’s Bodyguard” is as good as we can get to end the summer film season, then please let’s bring on the fall movies.
GRADE: C+
