The Hitman's Bodyguard (2017)
Directed by Patrick Hughes
The world’s top bodyguard gets a new client, a hitman who must testify at the International Court of Justice. They must put their differences aside and work together to make it to the trial on time.
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34 films that influenced The Hitman's Bodyguard
What critics say influenced The Hitman's Bodyguard
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.
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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).
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.
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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.
Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker had it in “Rush Hour”.