The Hitman’s Bodyguard tries relying on a familiar oil-and-water dynamic between its main characters. Instead, Reynolds’ uber-ironic nonchalance and Jackson’s bad-ass swagger are left to marinate in a ho-hum storyline and some pretty dull characters. Sadly, we’re a long ways away from the inspired snottiness of Deadpool or even the lovably trashy Snakes on a Plane.
But director Patrick Hughes ( The Expendables 3) has cast two actors who know how to do this kind of proudly disreputable genre piece very well. The challenge of criticizing an irreverent, over-the-top action movie like The Hitman’s Bodyguard is that protesting its smart-ass, blasé bent can feel akin to being the fuddy-duddy who needs to lighten up. Michael and Darius despise each other-they’ve had their run-ins in the past-but they have to work together if they’re going to make it to the Netherlands alive. Now reduced to being a bodyguard for coked-up corporate executives, he finds a shot at redemption when his ex-girlfriend, Amelia (Elodie Yung), an Interpol agent, asks him to escort a dangerous assassin named Darius Kincaid (Jackson) from a London prison to the Hague to testify against the former president of Belarus (Gary Oldman), who’s on trial for genocide. The film stars Ryan Reynolds as Michael Bryce, a former elite “protection specialist” who has yet to get over the fact that he let a high-profile client die two years ago. Nobody tell its makers that it’s mostly just mildly boring. An assembly line of ostensibly “hip” gestures and snarky attitude, The Hitman’s Bodyguard wants very badly to be a naughty, R-rated guilty pleasure. That’s a relatively small problem with this clanking piece of action-comedy junk, but it’s indicative of the film’s overall weaknesses. That’s not surprising-his characters often utter that colorful vulgarity, and few actors are as consistently funny as he is saying it-but it’s hard to remember a movie of his in which it felt so calculated and thus so tiresome. Jackson says “motherfucker” many times in The Hitman’s Bodyguard.