Review – The Hitman’s Bodyguard

It would be quite amusing to see the TV edit of The Hitman’s Bodyguard.

As summer blockbuster season comes to an end, we’re treated to a wild ride of a movie that begs you to stay – the fun’s not over yet! The premise is simple –  a top of the line bodyguard who has fallen from grace, is pressed into service to escort a high value witness to trial. It just so happens that his witness is one of the world’s deadliest assassins who has attempted to kill this particular bodyguard and his clients many, many times. Now they’re both hunted as European radicals would rather they don’t reach their destination to give testimony against a dangerous dictator.

Ryan Reynolds plays the bodyguard and Samuel L. Jackson is the hitman. That should tell you all you need to know about this movie right there. Gary Oldman also appears as the villainous dictator, and Salma Hayek is the hitman’s wife.

Reynolds is in full Deadpool mode here – If Deadpool were 500 times more uptight but just as moody and snarky. Jackson attempts to set a record for most uses of his favorite phrase in a single movie. Oldman channels the late Alan Rickman and every other actor who has portrayed a generic evil foreign power. Hayek chews every scene she’s in with relish, attempting to top her onscreen husband’s language and violence tallies despite having a fraction of the screen time.

By all measures this is a fun time if you’re here for the two leads letting it all hang out, gushing F-bombs like geysers and littering the floors with bodies all willy nilly. It is by no means a “good” movie though.

Tripping over cliches left and right, The Hitman’s Bodyguard is a buddy action comedy throwback that is not as good as you remember such movies being, but not aware enough of itself to make up for that fact. Ultra violent and ultra vulgar, it’s exceedingly funny and entertaining in spurts, but doesn’t rise above the thinnest of plots with the most predictable twists, all the while pretending it could possibly be taken seriously.

Don’t get me wrong – I was entertained, and it delivers pretty much what it is selling. Nothing less, but nothing more. It doesn’t surprise me that it was originally written as an action drama, but transformed to an action comedy weeks before filming began. It’s not quite either and so there a moments that just don’t play well with one another.

It would make a fun double feature with Deadpool, but while that film combined irreverence and action with genius, this one is a bit empty of anything but some fantastically vulgar banter between two leads who carry a weak film impressively far on their chemistry alone. And hey, there are some really good car chase scenes!

Mrs. Hamster did not screen this film

Brother Hamster says:

“It’s exactly what you’d expect it to be, and there’s nothing wrong with that. A lot of laughs and a lot of fun.”

My rating: Three out of five hats

Trailer: 

The Hitman’s Bodyguard triggers 3,377 theaters August 18