Director: Patrick Hughes
116 minutes (15) 2021
Lions Gate Blu-ray
Rating: 7/10
Review by Steven Hampton
After his debut
feature, enjoyable Australian western Red
Hill (2010), director Patrick Hughes graduated from Ozploitation to Stallone’s
franchise for The Expendables 3
(2014), and so established his genre proficiency and shoot-’em-up credentials as
a maker of big-budget, Hollywood star-packed, popular adventures. Hughes’
comedy actioner The Hitman’s Bodyguard
(2017) was a rather slicker mismatched-buddy movie for Ryan (Deadpool) Reynolds as “Triple-A rated”
security expert Bryce, caught in the danger zone between an Interpol manhunt
and Euro enemies of an escaped assassin, free-wheeling Kincaid (Samuel L.
Jackson), whose wife Sonia (Salma Hayek) proves more formidable than him. Action-audiences
cheered, happy viewers laughed at a winningly romanticised finale, but a few
snooty highbrow critics only sighed, as if they wondered: “Where are you going
with this?”
Delayed by COVID, for a year, sequel movie Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard reunites leads Reynolds, Jackson, and Hayek, while also casting Morgan Freeman and Antonio Banderas, along for this even wilder ride, centred on deadly plots by vengeful Greek terrorists, after Kincaid needs rescuing from Mafia goons. Other characters drift into focus during this increasingly manic farce, but its trio of stars maintain the illusion of consistency well enough to always be at the centre of our attention. There’s a non-stop stream of trashy livewire banter, numerous movie references (including Overboard, 1987), and, as before, this new mission’s crazier stunts and dollops of slapstick humour owe plenty to big franchises, like Die Hard (with Mad Max flavour), but somewhat less to James Bond, except in a Johnny English styled parody of 007 antics.
Stereotypes are very boldly over-hyped towards outrageous iconoclasm, and few players here are depicted as theatrical satire better than Banderas’ loony baddie-billionaire Aristotle, who openly wears ostentatious wealth on his tailored sleeves in garish displays of cringe-couture. Bryce and Sonia have ‘tragic’ histories they have tried to forget, but explored in flashback sketches with amusing punch-lines for (extra-) larger-than-life character-building scenes. Its multi-layered scenario romps through formats like a road-movie, with fugitives on tour, diving through European locations into disaster-movie and, ultimately, superhero cinema, much like those cross-genre escalations of the Fast & Furious franchise.
It pulls no punches while following an eccentric trend for using some hilariously inappropriate, or seemingly ‘wrong’, selections of accompanying music and songs for sequences of hectic, splattery violence. Although it never manages to match up to ‘insane’ levels of instantly-memorable impact as the originator of this style, Kubrick’s SF classic A Clockwork Orange (1971), it does so with far better choices than were heard in Kingsman movies, and still maintains a quirky sense of irony. Bryce (or ‘Breece’, as Sonia insists on calling him) declares, in his close-protection trade, that “boring is always best” - but director Hughes ensures this inherently loud and purposefully vulgar movie is never less than watchable.
The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard is out on digital, DVD, Blu-ray and
4K UHD now.
