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Aussiewood Double Feature: The Hitman’s Bodyguard (2017) and The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard (2021)

 


I typically address the features in these double bill reviews separately, but there’s not a lot of point trying to parse The Hitman’s Bodyguard (2017) and The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard (2021). Unlike, say, George Miller’s distinct accomplishments across the four Mad Max films, or Phillip Noyce’s differentiating touches across Jack Ryan sequels Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger, The Hitman’s Bodyguard and its sequel are the same flavour of film, the latter entry distinguished by foregrounding the titular wife, a supporting character in the original. In this respect, The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard follows the rather 1990s comedy sequel stratagem of "+1", ala Addams Family Values (add a baby), Look Who’s Talking Too (add another baby), and Another Stakeout (add Rosie O’ Donnell), 

 

The constants across both titles—the hitman and his bodyguard—are played by Samuel L. Jackson and Ryan Reynolds. In the first film, Jackson’s incarcerated hitman Darius Kincaid makes a deal to dish dirt on a dictator (Gary Oldman) in exchange for his wife Sonia’s (Hayek) release from prison. After Kincaid's security escort is hijacked, the surviving personnel (Elodie Young) calls in her former boyfriend, Reynold’s down-on-his-luck, formerly elite bodyguard Michael Bryce, to deliver him to international criminal court. In the sequel, Bryce, Kincaid and Sonia are reunited by an Interpol agent (Frank Grillo) to ensnare a nefarious tycoon (Antonio Banderas). Much of the events across both films unfold in Central, Eastern, and Southeast European countries against topical backdrops of war atrocities and collapsing economies, though I suspect the settings are less about responding to a broken world than they are producer Millenium Films’ history of booking incentivized productions in said countries, including The Expendables series. 

 

I desperately want to like Patrick Hughes as a filmmaker. I admire his sweet short Signs and thriller Red Hill, and as a Stallone completist/apologist I enjoy The Expendables 3. He’s a solid action thriller artisan, and aside from George Miller and James Wan no other working Australian directors are commanding budgets of that scale or international productions of that global reach. But based on The Hitman’s Bodyguard and its sequel, and begrudgingly I’ll add The Expendables 3, said films are technically polished, somewhat derivative—an impressive single-take fight scene in a hardware store mimics Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning—and ultimately inconsequential entertainments. 

 

Moreover, unlike earlier solid Australian action thriller artisans—Brian Trenchard-Smith, Richard Franklin, Russell Mulcahy—Hughes' personality is largely subsumed under the weight of his leads and their franchises. The best moments in The Expendables 3 were, in retrospect, shaped by its stars and their personas rather than any external stimuli, their ingredients seeded in previous instalments or earlier star vehicles, particularly Stallone’s overwrought earnestness and Gibson magnetic scum-bummery. Here, Hughes is subservient to Reynolds, Jackson, and Hayek's screen personas: same dog, different fleas. As per The Expendables 3, the actors are game and perform with relish—Hayek in particular is the special sauce of the original, albeit a special sauce that, as per the bad habits of sequels, gets over-used second time around—though as a child of the 1980s and 90s I prefer the archaic Stallone and co. over Reynolds’ smarmy surrealist quippery. As a child of those decades, I should probably be grateful for not one but two major popcorn films centered on non-fantastical, non-supernaturally or preternaturally-endowed human beings that aren’t based on pre-existing comic book, video game, or other intellectual property, except that the films function as satellite extensions of Reynolds’ Deadpool house style, replete with ultraviolence, ironic use of pop music, snarky motormouthed hitmen, and florid, cheerfully expletive-riddled dialogue.


Ben 

 

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