I’ve been an active filmgoer all of my life. One of the main things that’s changed in filmmaking over the 26 years that I’ve been alive is widespread caution among filmmakers about making sequels to their successful movies. It’s for good reason: the sequel is something to fear, because if you get it wrong it’s not only tough for everybody who spent the last large chunk of their lives working on the film—there was also a good chance that the movie would tarnish the legacy of the first one.
Unfortunately, what Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard, the formulaic sequel to 2017’s The Hitman Bodyguard, proved to me when I sat down in my theatre seat to watch it recently is that, sadly, maybe studios are no longer cautious about making sequels because they care more about making money than making a good movie.
I’ll admit that this movie is not as terrible as it could have been. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that there is some stuff in it that filmgoers can have a great laugh at. Both Samuel L. Jackson and Ryan Reynolds bring their A game to the film, and their chemistry is almost as funny as it was in the first movie. Salma Hayek is also very funny in this film; she even out-swears Jackson, and that is really hard to do.
Sadly, the rest of the movie is just the same old action comedy that you’ve seen a billion times before, and have seen done better. While some of the jokes are delivered very well and got a couple of chuckles out of the audience when I saw the movie, most are stale jokes that reference things like the actors’ reputation for cursing a lot or rehashing old running gags from the first film.
Also, for a movie that’s, seemingly, supposed to be centred on the premise of a hitman’s wife needing a bodyguard, there’s not much bodyguarding in this film. In fact, I dare say that the hitman’s wife saves the bodyguard more times than the bodyguard saves the hitman’s wife, which is maybe the only bit of subversive smarts in the whole movie… if it was intentional.
In short, despite having its funny moments—largely thanks to its killer cast—Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard fails to clear the low bar that was set by its predecessor and is just another okay-yet-generic action romp that’s, ultimately, forgettable.
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