Skip to main content
The Hitman's Bodyguard sounds like a title plucked from an internet random action-movie trope generator. The same could be said of its storyline: Ryan Reynolds plays disgraced security agent Michael Bryce, and Samuel L. Jackson is master assassin Darius Kincaid. For reasons that don't seem totally clear, Bryce is sent to safely ferry Kincaid from Coventry to testify against a Slavic despot played by Gary Oldman.
But the movie never takes itself all too seriously. Films like The Hitman's Bodyguard live and die on the addled chemistry between mismatched leads, and the endlessly enjoyable sparks that fly between Reynolds and Jackson render further criticism irrelevant.
The movie makes jagged tonal shifts from fussily boilerplate spy games to more intriguing flights of fancy, like the wonderful reverie explaining how Jackson first met true love Salma Hayek while in a gruesome bar fight. But director Patrick Hughes (Expendables 3) loosens Hitman's breakneck pace sufficiently for Jackson's theatrically mean-spirited bluster to find a natural rhythm against Reynolds' desperate hangdog snark.
The stars complement one another perfectly and, in the weirdest way, organically flesh out undeveloped characters otherwise defined solely by Hollywood clichés (the bodyguard's obsessive preparation vs. the hitman's shrugged improvisations). Kincaid's motto "When life gives you shit, make Kool-Aid" might not make much sense as an assassin's creed, but filmmakers cobbling together summer blockbusters could have worse strategies.
CRITIC'S RATING: 3/4 stars
The Hitman's Bodyguard is rated R. It plays at Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Lloyd, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, St. Johns Twin Cinema & Pub, Tigard, Vancouver.
