Review: The Hitman's Bodyguard Deserves Its Mixed Reviews
- Aug 31, 2017
- 2 min read
The highly-anticipated (at least, by me) action comedy, The Hitman's Bodyguard, starring Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L Jackson in the lead roles has an average rating of 5.1/10 on Rotten Tomatoes, and 47/100 on Metacritic. The relationship between the lead actors is the core, and the best part, of this subverted buddy-cop movie. But while the action is mostly great and fits the genre nicely, the visuals are disturbingly bad and other aspects don't quite hit the mark.
In many ways, The Hitman's Bodyguard should not work as well as it does. The plot is uninteresting on paper - a disgraced bodyguard (Reynolds) must escort a hitman (Jackson) to court to testify against a ruthless dictator (Oldman) before he gets off scot-free. Despite working against each other many times in the past, and the hitman's multiple attempts on the bodyguard's life, the duo forms an unlikely bond as they fight their way through hit squads and corrupt Interpol agents. It's a wonder this script was mentioned by 7 film executives for the 2011 Black List.
There's a love story so bad that I can't remember the details, there are some fantastic action scenes mixed with some average ones, and there's the incredibly generic second and third acts. It has the makings of one of the worst movies of the year. But there's also Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L Jackson. At the end of the day, the rest of the film was made to showcase a relationship between two rivals played by these stellar actors, and showcase it does. The two have the best parts in the film, with countless laugh-out-loud moments. Though neither of these men delivers the movie's funniest performance; that trophy goes to Salma Hayek, who plays Jackson's wife.
Then there's the effects. It became incredibly apparent during one scene which was featured heavily in the trailer, in which Reynolds is standing in front of a green screen talking to a vendor while chaos erupts in the background. It's one of the poorest green screen effects in years, or at least until someone falls off a building towards the end of the film. It's clear that the film's budget for post-production ran out, leaving half of the scenes looking blurry and too bright, no decent visual effects anywhere, and some shoddy-looking editing in action sequences. The movie is hideous, and you needn't look any further than the trailer to discover that.
The Hitman's Bodyguard is one of the funniest movies of the year, thanks to the delivery by Reynolds, Jackson, and Hayek. It's also one of the ugliest movies of the year, thanks to poor post-processing and FX. But if you can look past the cliched storytelling, the dumb love story, and some generic action, you might be able to appreciate its amazing scene transitions, performances, and sense of good old fashioned fun.
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