By Emilio Frenk.
Director: Patrick Hughes
Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Samuel L. Jackson, Gary Oldman, Elodie Yung, Richard E. Grant, Sam Hazeldine, Joaquim de Almeida and Salma Hayek.
Rating: Average.
Patrick Hughes, director of “The Expendables 3” brings another action movie of this summer with “The Hitman`s Bodyguard” and one of the things that I´m going to start saying is that I admit that I was entertained.
The movie centers in Michael Bryce (Ryan Reynolds) a bodyguard who witnesses the assassination of an arms dealer he was supposed to protect, which causes his reputation to go down.
Everything will change when his ex girlfriend and Interpol Agent Amelia Roussel (Elodie Young) asks him to bodyguard Darius Kincaid (Samuel L. Jackson) an international hitman who Bryce had differences in the past.
Kincaid is scheduled to testify at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands against Belorussian Dictator Vladislav Dukhovich (Gary Oldman).
At the end Bryce agrees to transport Kincaid to the Netherlands but both men will be in a race against time, where assassins will try to stop both Kincaid and Bryce on reaching their final destination at all costs.
Like I mentioned before “The Hitman´s Bodyguard” is an entertaining action and comedy movie.
There were very good moments and spectacular action sequences but as usual the main problem was the screenplay written by Tom O´Connor.
I thought the movie was too predictable from the beginning to the end and this is an issue for a movie of this genre. The excessive amount of flashbacks in this film were a problem and with one should have been enough.
I think that many elements were thrown to early and yes, it has to be entertaining but story wise you cannot be careless.
The chemistry between Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson works and reminds me a little bit of other comedy duos like Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte in “48 Hrs”, Mel Gibson and Danny Glover in “Lethal Weapon” and other action films.
Also I feel this movie reminds of the style of 1988´s “Midnight Run” starring Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin. I feel that this was one of the major influences that O´Connor used for his screenplay and it was notorious.
As an action movie it does deliver the goods and I consider it entertaining. For that reason “The Hitman`s Bodyguard” serves it`s purpose but in terms of narrative is where the movie failed.
I feel that with a better screenplay this movie could have even better and Patrick Hughe´s directing did improve compared to “The Expendables 3” which was one of the major flops in the summer of 2014.
I laughed and enjoyed “The Hitman`s Bodyguard” but the main reason that I´m skeptical is the story itself and the length of the film as well.
I give a slight recommendation to “The Hitman`s Bodyguard” for the elements that I mentioned before but if you want to be entertained, this is a movie to watch.