Cinemavenger

   The funniest, nastiest movie reviews anywhere.

The Hitman's Bodyguard

If movies have taught us anything - and they have, so fuck all you Lizzie Librarians and Andy Amishes - it's that Nazis are bad.  Not kind of bad.  Not relatively bad.  Unequivocally, inarguably, mayonnaise-left-outside-for-the-summer-in-Alabama bad.  Who the fuck disputes that?  Oh right, the U.S. of No Way's shitwit President.

You know a motherfucker who wouldn't piss on a muthafuckin' Nazi if he was on muthafuckin' fire?  Cinemavenger.  And also Samuel L. "Action" Jackson.  Ryan "DP" Reynolds probably hates Nazis, too.  Although with his chiseled abs, chin and cheeks (both sets) he is pretty close to the Aryan ideal.

A shared love of Nazi-hatin' may unite Jackson and Reynolds (and pretty much everyone else except actual Nazis and Trump), but in The Hitman's Bodyguard Jackson's Darius Kincaid and Reynolds' Michael Bryce might not even be able to agree on that.  Fuck oil and water, these two are mongoose and cobra.  Peace and the Middle East.  Hygiene and juggalos.  Sand and anal.

Bryce is a by-the-book bodyguard looking to reestablish his reputation and get back on top of the executive protection game . . . and his ex, Amelia Roussel (Elodie "Thankfully Not Too" Yung).  Kincaid, a hitman whose testimony could pin a passel of war crimes on Dukhovich (Gary "He'll Always Be Sid To Me" Oldman), is the Oscar to Bryce's Felix.  But first uptight Bryce has to get loosey-goosey Kincaid from a British prison to the Hague in one piece to testify.  Run Midnight Run!

Whichever Hollywood suit gave Patrick Hughes another directing gig after The Expendables 3 deserves a swift kick in his Golden Globes.  Hughes has two of the buzziest, most bankable leading men around in Jackson and Reynolds, and he does less with them than North Korea with a nuke.  Jackson's funnier in those Capital One commercials, and Reynolds looks like he'd rather be back in red spandex for Deadpool 2.

Plus, suspension of disbelief is one thing, but we're supposed to buy that sixty-something-year-old Kincaid can leap down an entire flight of stairs after being shot in the leg and nearly bleeding out 10 minutes before?  Or that Interpol agent Roussel is so breathtakingly inept that she'd pause mid-arrest to bang Bryce?

And how in the name of Leon do you make the jokey, bro-y The Hitman's Bodyguard and not have Reynolds carry Jackson out of an exploding building to the sweet strains of Whitney Houston belting out "I Will Always Love You?!"  Motherfucker!

August 18, 2017