SECOND SCREEN

Somewhere along the creative line, the decision was apparently taken to turn The

Hitman’s Bodyguard (16) HHH from an out-and-out action thriller to a comedy thriller and, boy, doesn’t it show, particularly in the first third of this extraordinarily uneven production.

One minute a ruthless Belorussian despot is calmly executing a mother and child while a small war breaks out on the streets of Manchester, and the next, Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L Jackson are bantering away and having a high old time debating the meaning of the word ‘plethora’. The result is very odd – like a not altogether happy cross between London Has Fallen and In Bruges.

What saves it is the undoubted screen chemistry between Reynolds and Jackson, the former playing a downon-his-luck, London-based ‘executive protection specialist’ (ie. a bodyguard) and the latter a former hitman who has struck a deal to give evidence against said despot (Gary Oldman) at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The only problem is getting him there.

With echoes of 2 Guns, the 2013 comedy thriller that employed Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg to similar effect, the result is an