The Hitman’s Bodyguard pairs Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson as two men who want each other dead and have to stay alive together. Patrick Hughes directed the 2017 action comedy from a script by Tom O’Connor. It runs 118 minutes. The tagline promises “Everyone’s out to get them… If they don’t kill each other first.” The film delivers exactly that and little else.
Trailer, via Lionsgate Movies.
Michael Bryce and the Fall From Triple-A
Reynolds plays Michael Bryce, a UK-based private bodyguard with a triple-A rating and a luxurious life. That life ends when his client, international arms dealer Takashi Kurosawa, is assassinated on his watch. Two years later Bryce scrapes by protecting drug-addicted corporate executives.
Then Interpol comes calling. Jackson’s Darius Kincaid is a foul-mouthed hitman locked up in England. He agrees to testify against Belarusian dictator Vladislav Dukhovich at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, in exchange for his wife Sonia’s release from prison.
The setup is clean. Dukhovich, played by Gary Oldman, was dethroned after a coup and stands trial for crimes against humanity. The source does not say how the trial ends. The prosecution has no solid evidence without Kincaid. So the film becomes a road movie with guns.
A Convoy Ambush in Coventry
Interpol Agent Amelia Roussel, Bryce’s ex-girlfriend, leads an armed convoy to move Kincaid. Élodie Yung plays her. The convoy is ambushed in Coventry with help from a mole inside the agency, Assistant Director Jean Foucher, played by Joaquim de Almeida. Most of the security team dies.
Kincaid kills the attackers. Amelia, the sole survivor, takes him to a safehouse and then recruits Bryce, because the agency can’t be trusted. The two men have history. The film keeps returning to that history.
Reynolds and Jackson have real chemistry, and the film knows it. That chemistry is the engine. Everything around it is scaffolding.
What the Cast List Actually Delivers
The supporting players are given almost nothing to do:
- Gary Oldman as Vladislav Dukhovich, the deposed Belarusian president on trial
- Salma Hayek as Sonia Kincaid, Darius’s wife, held in prison
- Richard E. Grant as Mr. Seifert, a drug-addicted executive and Bryce’s client
- Kirsty Mitchell as Rebecca Harr, Kincaid’s lawyer
- Barry Atsma as Moreno, the lead prosecution lawyer
Hayek’s Sonia is the film’s loudest missed chance. She exists to be rescued and to be talked about. Oldman, a genuine heavyweight, plays a dictator with no interior life at all. Grant gets a few minutes of comedy and vanishes.
This critic found the action sequences competent and the plot thin. Critics at large landed on the same split, praising the performances and the Reynolds-Jackson chemistry while criticizing the plot and execution. The movie is a delivery system for two actors enjoying themselves, and it works on that narrow level.
A Sequel That Says Everything
The Hitman’s Bodyguard grossed $183 million worldwide after its 18 August 2017 release in the United States. A sequel, Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard, followed on 16 June 2021. The gross and the sequel are two facts. The first does not prove the second.
The problem is that a delivery system is not a movie. O’Connor’s script has Bryce and Kincaid hitchhike to a ferry to Amsterdam. Darius confesses the story of his first kill, a racist who murdered his preacher father. Later he admits he killed Kurosawa, Bryce’s client. These are the beats that should land. They don’t, because the film treats them as plot mechanics rather than character.
The Hitman’s Bodyguard wants to be a buddy comedy with a body count. It gets the body count. The buddy part is carried entirely by its stars, and when they aren’t on screen, there is nothing underneath. The premise was strong enough to sell tickets twice. It was never strong enough to be a story.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
