It is no secret that more than half of us moviegoers will find this craziness of a film (mostly) hilarious. We got Ryan Reynolds! Samuel L. Jackson! Salma Hayek! Oh, my goodness, even Morgan Freeman!!! They are dropping f-bombs everywhere, shooting and blowing up everything, and cracking jokes in every space possible! It’s as if director Patrick Hughes consulted with Michael Bay and Quentin Tarantino about each scene collectively and then said, “Let us shoot all these sequences with all these amazing actors/actresses! No doubt the audience will gobble it up!”
The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard, an unhinged sequel to 2017’s (also crazy) The Hitman’s Bodyguard, is about as kooky as it gets. Michael Bryce (as Reynolds) goes on a company-mandated sabbatical because he cannot stand in the same room with notorious hitman Darius Kincaid (Jackson). So, he ends up getting a 12-hour (more like five minutes in our eyes) break from him until Kincaid’s wife Sonia (Hayek) comes and destroys the very place he is relaxing in. Bryce does not want to kill anybody, resorting to pepper spray and leaving voicemails to his futuristic self.
Reynolds knows how to make patronizing, quick-witted humor (a la from his fourth-wall-breaking Deadpool roots). This time around, he shows a surprising side of sensitivity with a saddening out-of-the-blue backstory (that somehow entails the presence of Morgan Freeman). Jackson, reverting to his hilarious origins from Pulp Fiction, is always disgusted with his “bodyguard” and tells Bryce with excessive profanity and insults that he needs to find the courage and get along with the mission. Oh, and Hayek’s character yearns for a baby (while everyone knows she will be a bat-bleep crazy mother) and screams Spanish because cursing in another language always yields amusement.
The characters and their backstories are so wild that one almost forgets the plot. Oh yeah, we got some explosions and worldwide chaos at hand because these antagonists and some Aristotle man (Antonio Banderas) want to use some weapon to take out all of Europe. The government cannot do the job properly, so, of course, it relies on the hands of nationwide criminals! They will surely know how to satisfy everyone’s needs.
All this debauchery and chaos buoyed by the trio of Reynolds, Jackson, and Hayek is guaranteed to generate at least one laugh during the movie. It is all silly. But it is also highly jarring and sloppy so frequently that it no longer becomes a movie. It becomes a team exercise concerning who can command the screen better. SO many locations and villains are gone in a heartbeat that you think of those horrible CGI monsters endlessly dying in Suicide Squad. They exist, and then seconds later, no one cares that they died gruesomely. You are focused on the star cast, d*** it!
Even in the quietest moments, it fails to hit the notes because it becomes oversaturated with constant bickering or dark humor. We get it, you all do not really like each other, but weirdly, you do. The same thing was said in all those buddy-cop/” we could not get along” partner movies. This writer stands almost convinced that the duo of Jackson and Reynolds became inspired by Rush Hour (starring Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker). Oh, the commonalities!
The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard comes back into theaters with a humorous adrenaline rush thanks to Reynolds, Jackson, and Hayek’s charm. Once it is over, the pain starts setting in as to how forgettable the overall product was.
