The Hitman's Bodyguard

Midnight Run for the new millennium... just don't expect a believable criminal plot or anything like that, because that's really not the case here. The film is just under two hours of Samuel L. Jackson and Ryan Reynolds, and not only their verbal shootouts and the pleasant “relax, everything will turn out well" atmosphere. However, I would cut down the length of the film, because it does not deserve slightly less than two hours and, for example, after the great escape from Amsterdam the second big action scene with a car chase was completely boring and useless, and only the brawl at a hardware store saved it. (08/03/2021)

An excellent action comedy that has all the necessary attributes to become a successful and quality film. The leading duo with the again diabolical Samuel L. Jackson and the Deadpool-like Ryan Reynolds are brilliant, but the villain Gary Oldman also excels, albeit with less space, but solid work nonetheless. As for the action, it's exactly the kind I like, that is to say, properly brutal, very clear, there's no shortage of fights and shootouts, and there are chases too, so in that respect you really can't complain at all, and on top of that there's plenty of it. When blood is not spurting or corpses are not falling, there’s space for the humour, which is properly foul and cheeky. It will not tear up your diaphragm, but you will have a smile on your face throughout the film. Story-wise, it's not downright bad either, so in the action-comedy rank for me a deserved number one this year. I had an incredibly good time. 90% (28/08/2017)

At times it grinds a lot in its blend of crazy buddy comedy with serious ideas and elements (Gary Oldman's villain is too one-dimensionally psychopathic for such a lightweight film), and the pacing is uneven depending on the attractiveness of each character, but the two title characters are so entertainingly sketched and their confrontations so well motivationally set, transformative, and embellished, with a supporting character (Hayek’s) that so perfectly embodies my idea of a badass femme fatale, and the action scenes so accurately combine adrenaline with hyperbole that I can't help but hum contentedly and recommend this action flick with an A-list cast; for Samuel's sake alone, who drops one firecracker after another and delivers his third best role after Pulp Fiction and The Hateful Eight. 70% (22/08/2017)

I like movies like this a lot, and there hasn't been a classic action buddy comedy in a long time (no, The Nice Guys is not a classic action buddy comedy), so I was quite excited. And left the theater pretty disappointed. The Hitman’s Bodyguard always manages to score a few points on something, but after a while it trips over its own feet. Patrick Hughes does come up with and shoot some good action scenes, and a couple of them are excellent, but all of them are accompanied by completely inappropriate and ultimately annoying music. Samuel L. Jackson enjoys his role exactly as one would expect, but, unfortunately, Ryan Reynolds is usually next to him playing a depressed, boring and annoying buffoon. For a while it seems like an easygoing and funny film, only to switch at some points into a rather depressing and unnecessarily serious one. Well, the result is a mess that sometimes goes excellently, sometimes terribly and mostly kind of mediocre. After its clever and successful marketing, I expected a lot more. (22/08/2017)

Hughes doesn't pack top of the range action like his colleagues Stahelski or Leitch, so even if it is supposed to look like that of John Wick or Atomic Blonde, it's not as good – some of the scenes, actually, look like out of a Van Damme B-movie made in Romania. But that's one of the few downsides of an otherwise very laid-back, at times very entertaining film packed with one-liners that is dominated primarily by the two leads, the iconic villain played by Gary Oldman, who is still doing his thing and still entertaining us, and Salma Hayek, who is 50 and, quite incomprehensibly, still looks 30. I don't think you'd want to see it repeatedly, because you'd miss the moment of surprise and realize what a load of crap it actually is, but it's fine lightweight disposable entertainment. (20/08/2017)