Patrick Hughes
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Lethal Weapon (1987)
Directed by Richard Donner
influenced The Hitman's Bodyguard (2017)
Themes Plot
The buddy movie genre is the distillation of that idea into its purest form, and we have seen instant classics like Lethal Weapon, 48 hrs., and Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang debut on the big screen as a result.
Directed by Patrick Hughes (“The Expendibles 3”) from a script by Tom O’Connor (“Fire With Fire”), “The Hitman’s Bodyguard” seems reverseengineered to ape every middlebrow late-’80s-to-mid-’90s testosterone-fest, from “ Lethal Weapon ” to “ Bad Boys .”
Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L Jackson team up as a pair of bickering, sharp-shooting, hard-punching action partners in a movie that replicates, step by formulaic step, the familiar and now oddly dated template of the inter-racial buddy movies of the Eighties (think 48 Hours or Lethal Weapon).
The aim of screenwriter Tom O’Connor and director Patrick Hughes (“The Expendables 3”) was clearly to resurrect the mismatched-buddy actioners of the 1980s, which Shane Black had pretty much codified in the first two “Lethal Weapon” movies.
Anybody who’s seen 48 Hrs., Lethal Weapon and their ilk can fill in the blanks from here: Kincaid and Bryce don’t get along at first, learn how to play nice, and by the end are saving each other’s bacon.
Director Patrick Hughes and screenwriter Tom O’Connor were clearly going for one of those mismatched buddy cop flicks of the 90s, but with nothing approaching the sadistic charm of Lethal Weapon or the populist allure of Die Hard, The Hitman’s Bodyguard is just a forgettable, foul-mouthed blood-fest that repeatedly misses the mark with nearly everything it tries to do.
Depending on the scene, The Hitman's Bodyguard plays like an homage to and parody of '80s bromantic mayhem, like 48 Hrs. with a shorter deadline.
Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy had chemistry in “48 Hours”.
Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L Jackson team up as a pair of bickering, sharp-shooting, hard-punching action partners in a movie that replicates, step by formulaic step, the familiar and now oddly dated template of the inter-racial buddy movies of the Eighties (think 48 Hours or Lethal Weapon).
If Oldman’s dictator wasn’t bad enough, then a scene involving a lorry packed with explosives being driven into a crowd feels even more distasteful, especially since Hughes gets caught somewhere between spectacle and horror in the same way that Michael Bay did with Pearl Harbor.
That’s not a style that works much of the time (see “Shoot ’Em Up” or early Arnold Schwarzenegger flop “The Villain”), but in the hands of “The Expendables 3” helmer Patrick Hughes — and more importantly, owing to the chemistry of stars Samuel L. Jackson and Ryan Reynolds — it makes for a delightfully ridiculous screwball action comedy.
It’s a tired trope, and has more than a whiff of “The Defiant Ones" (that 1958 movie where a white prisoner is shackled to a black prisoner and they make a run for it).
On the whole, however, the team still delivers something compulsively watchable, with playful nods to countless opposites-attract, good cop/bad cop buddy flicks, à la “48 Hours,” “Trading Places” and “Lethal Weapon.”
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
influenced The Hitman's Bodyguard (2017)
Characters Themes
Not only is all this indescribably tiresome, it's also more than a tad sad to watch Jackson slum through such Pulp Fiction-derivative nonsense.
As you might expect, the “Deadpool” and “Pulp Fiction” stars put a lot of R-rated mileage on their odometers, and the one-note gag for Hayek’s character is that she’s every bit as foulmouthed as her husband.
No one's performance is a stretch: Jackson is a quick-witted, foul-mouthed, eyebrow-raising assassin who justifies his work, a role he's been perfecting since Pulp Fiction , while Reynolds is a sharp-tongued, super-detailed bodyguard who can't stop talking.
Reynolds plays it cute, but Jackson steals the show, putting Bryce in his place with the existential question — the kind philosopher-hitman Jules Winnfield might have asked in “Pulp Fiction” — about which of the two men has chosen the more righteous path: “he who kills evil motherfuckers, or he who protects them”?
Even his pairing with Travolta in Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction could, in some ways, be considered a buddy comedy.
Screenwriter Tom O’Connor was going for “Pulp Fiction” meets “Grosse Pointe Blank.”
Commercial moviemaking is often a matter of crossing your fingers and worrying about the same thing Gene Kelly did in “Singin’ in the Rain,” when, at the last minute, Monumental Pictures turned “The Dueling Cavalier” into a musical.
Having directed nearly every other male action star (and a slew of top-billed non-stars) in The Expendables 3, Patrick Hughes adds Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson to his stable in The Hitman's Bodyguard, an action-comedy that takes the Midnight Run template to The Hague.
It's not based on any pre-existing source material (aside from clear Midnight Run-esque premise), and it's actually great to see an original film get made in the summer that has been mostly defined by franchises, sequels, prequels, and reboots.
Viewers only need to think back to Midnight Run for a better-executed example of mismatched bad guys on the run.
Stuck in a downward spiral ever since, Bryce has a shot at career redemption if he can complete this “Midnight Run”-style mission, which he reluctantly accepts after he and Kincaid have made some obligatory attempts to destroy each other (acrimonious job history and all that).
Midnight Run really set the gold standard for this sort of thing, with Running Scared, Lethal Weapon, 48 Hrs. and a few others not far behind.
So off we go on this “Midnight Run” knockoff, and time and again the comedy is tone-deaf and tired.
The poster for “The Hitman’s Bodyguard” parodies the Whitney Houston/Kevin Costner “The Bodyguard,” with Ryan Reynolds lovingly carrying Samuel L. Jackson to safety.
The film is based on the hugely successful books by Australian author and former actor Aaron Blabey ( Crash/Burn ), who was executive producer on the film along with Australian director Patrick Hughes ( Red Hill ; Expendables 3 ; The Hitman’s (Wife’s) Bodyguard ).
But he unleashed it on the American cinema in 1997 with Face/Off , with Nicolas Cage and John Travolta blasting seven shades of slow hell out of each other while an adorable tyke – and us – listened to Somewhere Over The Rainbow on his headphones.
Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker had it in “Rush Hour”.
We've seen versions of this before, in movies from "The Gauntlet" to "Midnight Run," and unable to really make anything new, "The Hitman's Bodyguard" tries to make everything bigger.
Sadly, we’re a long ways away from the inspired snottiness of Deadpool or even the lovably trashy Snakes on a Plane.
“This guy just single-handedly ruined the word motherf----r,” Michael complains, after Darius’s particularly spectacular “Snakes on a Plane”-esque outburst.
FAST FACT: Samuel L. Jackson signed on for the 2006 thriller “Snakes on a Plane” based on … the title .
Jackson’s role is especially egregious, his dialogue seemingly written by someone who wrote it for the Oscar nominee, but hasn’t seen any of his performances beyond Snakes on a Plane.
In a film that’s only so-so in the action department, the real fun comes from the incessant bickering between the two stars — which falls somewhere between “Bringing Up Baby” and the combative, high-attitude style of Shane Black buddy movies.
The Philadelphia Story (1940)
Directed by George Cukor
influenced The Hitman's Bodyguard (2017)
Themes
Beyond that, there is not a single original or uniquely handled item to be had—our heroes are not particularly interesting, their hostile banter is contrived and never funny and the elaborate scrapes they get into are lazily staged by director Patrick Hughes, the auteur of “The Expendables 3,” a film that comes across like “The Philadelphia Story” in comedic terms compared to this.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)
Directed by Shane Black
influenced The Hitman's Bodyguard (2017)
Dialogue
The script by Tom O'Connor is a throwback to the glory days of Shane Black (The Last Boy Scout, The Long Kiss Goodnight and the immortal Kiss Kiss Bang Bang), but unfortunately, Black isn't around to do tune-ups.
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997)
Directed by Jay Roach
influenced The Hitman's Bodyguard (2017)
Visuals
One minute the film offers audiences brutal violence of a Michael Mann crime-thriller, and in the very next scene it aims for Austin Powers-level goofiness as Salma Hayek slaughters drunk bar patrons in a sort of slow motion murder ballet.
Oldman tries his best to make the character as sinister as possible but the way the role is written he comes across more as a villain cut from an "Austin Powers" movie.
Meanwhile, with more than 200 kills to his name, Kincaid is at the top of his game when he gets nabbed visiting his wife Sonia in hospital (Salma Hayek like you’ve never seen her, saltier and more ferocious even than Jacki Weaver was in “Animal Kingdom”).