The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard
While the original added some interest and vitality to the genre, this cash-grab sequel is cliche ridden to the extreme.
Michael Bryce (Ryan Reynolds) is struggling to cope after the events of the last film, where he saved Darius Kincaid (Samuel L Jackson) from death at the hands of a megalomaniac dictator, despite Darius’s status as the world’s foremost assassin and Michael’s desire to reacquire his AAA Bodyguard status. His therapist advises him to take a break, so he travels to Italy where his leisure is immediately interrupted by Sonia Kincaid (Salma Hayek). In a flurry of bullets, she enlists Michael’s help to rescue her husband - an activity that lands them in the midst of a plot to destroy Europe. Enlisted by Interpol agent Bobby O’Neill (Frank Grillo) against their will, they must not travel across the country to foil Aristotle Papadopolous (Antonio Banderas) before he enacts his terrible vengeance.
The Hitman’s Bodyguard took a really interesting premise, added Reynolds and Jackson doing their respective regular schtick, and threw in a heap of action beats that built off the premise itself. Bryce was cautious, with a desire to plan, minimise risk, etc. and was fighting with a man who was the exact opposite. Action set pieces followed this formula, alternately having disaster strike because of one or the other philosophies, and salvation provided by the alternate.
This bare bones sequel scraps that in favour of endless gags, ridiculous action set pieces, and a series of B-jokes that should have wound up on the cutting room floor.
Let’s touch on the story itself first. We’ve seen it a hundred times before, it’s nothing remotely interesting or surprising. You can see every twist and turn coming a mile off, and often the story direction almost feels like a sledgehammer sized wink at the audience - like the filmmakers are knowingly taunting us with how terrible this is. It’s also built from a script that aggressively caricatures it’s characters. Aristotle is a joke as the villain, from a vaguely racist name to a performance and dialogue that could have been written by a monkey on a typewriter. Bobby O’Neill is so ridiculously aggressive and insensitive, and even Bryce and the Kincaid’s lose any nuance they had in the original. Let’s not even touch on Morgan Freeman’s role, which looked like it was shot in 45 minutes one day and was the flimsiest, most obviously villainous turn in the decade.
The action loses any of the fun of the original. Here, they make Bryce largely ineffectual in service of a film-long gag about how he is the child the Kincaid’s need. This is at the expense of any interest in this character at all, as he is literally incapacitated, either emotionally or physically, for much of the runtime. The film also loses its grip on reality, having Bryce hit by vehicles, boats, and more with no obvious injury ever. It’s slapstick comedy at its worst. Darius Kincaid is also hamstrung, moreso by the inflated presence of his wife (which isn’t a bad thing), but again removes some of the good stuff from #1.
The only redeeming feature here is Salma Hayek as Sonia Kincaid. She dials it up to about 1 million, but it somehow comes together and works. Her insane performance, playing to the rafters in comedy, drama and anger alike, brings some actual laughs tinged with the occasional emotional nuance. It’s slight, but at least it is a small life raft to hold onto in the flood of terribleness that has washed away anything good about the original and left only the most barebones cash grab since they split the final Hunger Games book into two films.
