Hitman's Bodyguard, The (2017) [Blu-ray]
Action | Comedy

Tagline: Everyone's out to get them... If they don't kill each other first.

Fate comes full circle when a top bodyguard takes on the job of protecting the world's best hit man, who's bound for the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands to testify against an Eastern European country's ruthless ex-ruler. They must put their differences aside and work together to make it to the trial on time.

Storyline: With his reputation in tatters after a painfully unsuccessful delivery of a distinguished Japanese client, former triple-A executive protection agent, Michael Bryce, two long years after the disgraceful incident, is now reduced to a mere second-class bodyguard for hire. Under those circumstances, Bryce would do anything to prove his worth once again, and as a result, it won't be long before he accepts an offer from Interpol to escort the renowned international assassin Darius Kincaid from Manchester to the Hague. The task seems simple: Bryce only needs to transport the contract killer from point A to point B, nevertheless, Kincaid, as the only one with the guts and enough hard evidence to testify against a tyrannical Belarusian dictator, is an obvious target, while the trip to the Netherlands is long and hazardous. Without a doubt, this a race against the clock as the mismatched duo will have to put aside their grudges, in a non-stop concerto for bullets. Written by Nick Riganas

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, November 19, 2017 Midnight Run established a genial template that a certain subgenre of "road movie" has aped to varying degrees of success. The basic formulation takes two mismatched characters, one of whom is in some sort of danger, and plops them down together in a series of misadventures that provides about equal emphasis on shoot 'em up set pieces and raucous comedy. The Hitman's Bodyguard certainly fulfills that basic setup better than most, although it does so with everything routinely "turned up to 11", which includes some fairly gory gun battles and comedy that routinely relies on expletives that are far from deleted. Michael Bryce (Ryan Reynolds) is a high priced operative in London tasked with protecting various bigwigs, and Bryce is more than a bit pleased he has achieved a so-called Triple A rating of effectiveness (whether or not there is an actual Triple A rating for bodyguards turns into something of a running gag in this film). An opening vignette seems to document the picayune attention to detail Bryce brings to his work, in this case delivering a Japanese arms dealer to safety at the man's private jet. Everything goes exactly according to plan, which Bryce's team sums up as "boring is better", until, that is — it doesn't. With a dead client on his resume, Michael finds himself demoted to taking less than glamorous jobs whisking various ne'er-do-wells to their appointed rounds. A trial concerning the human rights violations of supposed Belarus dictator Vladislav Dukhovich (Gary Oldman) at The Hague in The Netherlands is having trouble establishing its case, since many potential witnesses end up dead or are in fact too scared to even come testify to begin with, and the one who is shown testifying has his evidence dismissed as hearsay, despite the fact that the film clearly indicates that what the guy is alleging (the murder of his family to keep him "politically correct") actually happened. That leads to a perhaps desperate gambit on the part of Interpol to get Dukhovich's former hitman Darius Kincaid (Samuel L. Jackson) to The Hague from London, where Kincaid has been imprisoned for unspecified crimes. Kincaid willingly agrees to go since Interpol agrees to free Kincaid's wife Sonia (Salma Hayek), who has been swept up in Kincaid's troubles and is jailed herself.

There's absolutely no question where The Hitman's Bodyguard is going nor in fact how it's going to get there, and soon enough Mike's ex- girlfriend Amelia Roussel (Élodie Yung), the Interpol agent tasked with getting Kincaid to The Hague, has to call in her erstwhile lover after a mole reveals her whereabouts and most of her team is slaughtered (in one of the film's bloodier sequences). Kind of interestingly, at least insofar as these things typically go, The Hitman's Bodyguard doesn't even try to mask who the mole is, a structural artifice that arguably deprives the film of at least some suspense, though it has to be admitted that usually films that have a conceit like this never really hide the "inside" villain's identity very well to begin with.

That leaves the rest of the film with Mike and Kincaid more or less tethered to each other, with both Dukhovich's henchmen and the mole's assassins after the pair, with hilarity (and occasional violence) ensuing. And the fact is The Hitman's Bodyguard is often very funny. There's very little subtlety in the comedy most of the time, but it lands more often than it doesn't, a relatively rarity these days. Some of the funniest bits aren't actually that germane to the main "road" element of the film, including a great set of vignettes with Sonia in her cell, which she shares with a hapless fellow inmate (I won't spoil the gags involved, other than to say they're at least giggle worthy).

What's a little unusual here is the "reversal" of types, with regard to Midnight Run's original formulation. Here it's the ostensible prisoner who is in fact a "take no prisoners" type, at least verbally, with the ostensible bounty hunter the uptight, laconic sort. That's more or less the mirror image of the De Niro — Grodin outing, but it exploits the same "opposites distract" (so to speak) ambience and tends to work perfectly well. The film is too calculated to ever work up any real suspense as to what ultimately is going to happen, but it's so relentlessly energetic that few will probably complain too loudly.

One of the most refreshing things about The Hitman's Bodyguard is the increased realization of what a winning comedy actor Ryan Reynolds can be, when given the proper kind of material. Reynolds, who arguably saw his star falter a bit with outings like Green Lantern, has really proven himself quite capable lately in any number of films, including of course Deadpool, a film to which The Hitman's Bodyguard actually has some manic tonal similarities, albeit without the purported superhero aspect. Reynolds' Michael is a decent guy who finds himself buffeted by the vagaries of fate, but who isn't going to go down without a fight, and he plays wonderfully well off of Jackson's kind of punkish Kincaid. Also wringing quite a few laughs, and maybe even a few more tender emotions, out of the material is an effective Hayek, who busts a few "take no prisoners" moves herself in a fun sequence documenting how Sonia and Kincaid met back in the day.

If you have a certain tolerance for over the top potty mouthed humor, The Hitman's Bodyguard may well delight you as much as the at least relatively tamer Midnight Run. I personally found the film routinely hilarious, and the action sequences are well staged if awfully predictable. In fact, the entire film is pretty predictable, but with the winning charisma and teamwork of Reynolds and Jackson, it hardly matters. Technical merits are first rate, and The Hitman's Bodyguard comes Recommended.


[CSW] -3.8- An action-comedy that if it strikes you right is very funny and very good, but if you are easily offended by profanity or violence then it might not be your cup of tea. I wasn't offended and found it both very funny and very good. This movie actually spent some time on the backstories of Reynolds (blamed a girlfriend for losing his job) and Jackson (a perennial romantic, and who wouldn't be with a wife like Hayek?) and how their love lives are such an important part of who they are today. Plenty of action scenes with nicely choreographed fight scenes. The Reynolds/Jackson interplay was hilarious, and there are even emotional moments in the movie at times. Most people don't usually give action-comedy a high rate but the action and the comedy in this movie was remarkable, almost perfect. It might surprise a lot of people to find that they too liked this movie much more than they expected.
[V5.0-A5.0] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box motion codes were available at the time of this rental although they are available now.


º º