Tone-deaf road movie misses mark
Midnight Run, The Last Boyscout, Lethal Weapon and last year’s The Nice Guys – with whip-smart banter between the leads, an unhealthy dose of violence and a cast of watchable support players popping in to put a few twists in the tale, the genre is a perfect delivery vehicle for all the laughs and action we want and deserve on a Friday night at the multiplex.
The undisputed modern-day king of the buddy actioner is wunderkind Shane Black. Observant readers will already know Black as the writer and sometime director of three of the films I just cited above.
The Hitman’s Bodyguard writer Tom O’Connor shamelessly apes Black’s style and rhythms, while lifting a fair whack of Midnight Run‘ s storyline.
Professional bodyguard and ‘‘Triple A-Rated Protection Agent’’ Michael Bryce (Ryan Reynolds) is contacted by ex-lover and Interpol agent Amelia Roussel (star-in-themaking Elodie Yung) to escort convicted assassin and all-’round bad boy Darius Kincaid (Samuel L Jackson) from England to The Hague to testify against a murderous Eastern European despot.
For reasons too daft and contrived to bear any scrutiny at all, the deadline is 5pm the following day.
What follows is a road movie, featuring an unfeasible number of disposable bad guys, a score of wrecked cars and a great number of high-velocity gun fights in various European cities.
Whether any of this is palatable at this particular moment of history is for you to decide. Anyone who knows me knows I don’t care much for ‘‘good taste’’, but much of The Hitman’s Bodyguard still struck me as illtimed and profoundly tone-deaf.
Not helping is the fact a lot of O’Connor’s one-liners just aren’t particularly funny. Writing a film so clearly in the Shane Black style is only going to invite comparison, and The Hitman’s Bodyguard really doesn’t clear the bar. Not all, but a lot of the jokes fall flat.
Meanwhile, director Patrick Hughes’ ( The Expendables 3) staging of the action scenes, after a kick-arse start, quickly becomes repetitive and ludicrous.
There’s only so many times I could watch Reynolds and Jackson emerge unscathed from a car so riddled with bullet holes it was more daylight than metal without eventually becoming irritated and bored.
But when The Hitman’s Bodyguard does work, it works well enough. And the moments it does are almost completely due to Jackson and screen-wife Salma Hayek. Both of them rip into their work like they’re truly happy to be there.
Jackson isn’t so much directed here as unleashed, while Hayek makes it clear early on that though she might not make top billing, she is still the most dangerous character in the film.
Those two, plus a few scenes that truly do function as they are supposed to, are probably just about enough to make The Hitman’s Bodyguard worth the price of your ticket. Just about.
– Graeme Tuckett