The Hitman's Bodyguard

A romp full of the best lines from start to finish. Jackson is God and Reynolds in Deadpool mode (in fact this could be a prequel). Awesome action, locations atypical. And the last time I saw such a superb chase (boat, motorbike, car) was in Jackie Chan’s Armor of God. Fucking Prague! (01/28/2018)

Hughes doesn't pack top of the range action like his colleagues Stahelski or Leitch, so even if it is supposed to look like that of John Wick or Atomic Blonde, it's not as good – some of the scenes, actually, look like out of a Van Damme B-movie made in Romania. But that's one of the few downsides of an otherwise very laid-back, at times very entertaining film packed with one-liners that is dominated primarily by the two leads, the iconic villain played by Gary Oldman, who is still doing his thing and still entertaining us, and Salma Hayek, who is 50 and, quite incomprehensibly, still looks 30. I don't think you'd want to see it repeatedly, because you'd miss the moment of surprise and realize what a load of crap it actually is, but it's fine lightweight disposable entertainment. (08/19/2017)

If I were twelve years old and saw this movie on basic cable on a Saturday night, I would be thrilled. But I’m not twelve anymore and I saw it at the cinema. Shane Black, who fundamentally influenced the form of modern buddy movies, understood that if you want to make movies like Lethal Weapon today, you can’t take either yourself or the film seriously (see the third Iron Man and The Nice Guys). There are tendencies toward self-awareness in The Hitman’s Bodyguard (though there is sometimes a very fine line between “it’s terribly stupid, you know it’s terribly stupid, and we know that you know” and simply “it's terribly stupid”), but the film handles them terribly inconsistently. Besides the almost parodic scenes (the apocalypse is unfolding behind Michael while he calmly continues his monologue) there are moments of simple exaggeration that are supposed to be touching or, in the worst case, to tell of pseudo-fictional war crimes (given the context, I found the storyline with Dukhovich to be rather tasteless). The characters suffer from the same identity crisis. They sometimes behave like people educated by genre clichés, but in a number of other respects, they just predictably follow conventions and make stupid mistakes. The narrative repeatedly loses momentum due to the unsuccessful attempt to humanise the two characters through their relationship with the dear better half and a more or less serious explanation of how they became the people they are (the flashback to Darius’s first murder, for example, is simply out of place due to its reverent tone). This constant relationship-counselling philosophising, even in moments when the protagonists are clearly short on time, is not skilfully integrated into the ongoing action and serves only to extend the runtime – the main storyline grinds to a halt so that the men can wallow in their feelings and whine a little. The pace is thus fairly uneven and the film seems to be much longer than it actually is. The level is raised significantly by the long action sequences in Amsterdam and The Hague, which have the appropriate verve and wit, even though they are horribly edited and don’t really move the narrative anywhere (well, except when the characters move from one place to another). But then comes the haphazard (in terms of special effects, the screenplay and the acting) final act, which basically negates the preceding hundred minutes (in the end, everything is resolved in a completely different way than what the story had been leading up to the whole time) and the whole film goes steeply downhill. The Hitman’s Bodyguard could have been an excellent high-concept action movie with a pair of charismatic actors (of which Jackson is the dominant force in the film) and a ’90s feel, if it didn’t so clumsily defend its overwrought B-movie nature and add importance in a way that takes all of the fun out of it. 50% (08/18/2017)

Though The Hitman’s Bodyguard has some pretty crazy humor, it’s less funny than you’d expect. But you get used to it and it works better in the last third, as does the chemistry between Samuel L. Jackson and Ryan Reynolds, who would need a more sensitive director’s hand to guide them. The Hitman’s Bodyguard wants to be a cool tough-guy comedy, but falls into superficial arrogance (like the worst moments from Michael Bay). This fault is mostly displayed by the character played by Salma Hayek, who was not a fortunate casting decision. The action is abundant and decently loud. I was mostly pleased with the setting in the streets of Amsterdam, which we do not get to see often enough. (09/08/2017)

It hasn’t happened to me in a long time that after watching a movie I would feel that I just saw two different halves of an action comedy that were really different in terms of quality. My excitement over a new action comedy gradually faded as I was watching a story taking place in London that wasn’t too funny and in which the pair (Samuel L. Jackson and Ryan Reynolds) couldn’t seem to manage to tune in to the proper buddy-comedy wavelength. It took a long time and for a moment I felt that I wouldn’t manage to watch it to the end. For instance, Selma Hayek is so incredibly unfunny in this one and she didn’t fit in her role so much that it was nothing but embarrassing. But about an hour into the movie, something incredible happened. The movie relocated to Amsterdam and it not only turned into a whirlwind of action, but it got pretty entertaining as well. Samuel and Ryan literally found one another and they started shooting catchphrases at each other. In the end, I was so excited about the second half that I had to watch several scenes again. How is it even possible that one film could create so many different emotions? (11/30/2017)