After last week’s ultimately disappointing Atomic Blonde, and the very poor Overdrive, we have yet another late summer action movie. Like the other two, I fear that The Hitman’s Bodyguard will disappoint at the box office, but this is easily the best of the three.
Ryan Reynolds stars as the bodyguard, Michael Bryce. His previously successful career took a nosedive when someone he was protecting was killed and now he has a much lower class of clientele. The hitman is Darius Kincaid (Samuel L Jackson) who has agreed to give evidence against a brutal Belarussian dictator, played by Gary Oldman, at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. When Kincaid’s Interpol unit transporting him to the court is ambushed in Coventry, the one surviving member, Amelia Roussel (Elodie Yung) goes on the run with Kincaid and enlists, Bryce’s (her former boyfriend) help.
That this is a success is largely down to two things. Principally the performances of Reynolds and Jackson. They are good individually, even if it is the sort of role that you have seen Jackson in so often before, but also have a brilliant chemistry together. It is their amusing interaction that gives the film a real zip. The actions scenes, again mostly far from totally original, are very well staged by director Patrick Hughes.
The other performances are not on the same level. Oldman is not quite phoning it in as he has done with other roles of this nature, but Yung makes little impression and Salma Hayek as Kincaid’s wide did not work for me.
There are some holes in the plot – what are the chances that Amelia knows the whereabouts of a safe house in a city that they were seemingly randomly attacked in? But, whilst Reynolds and Jackson are on screen, this film has a great energy and is a lot of fun.
Rating: 7.5 out of 10