“The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard” is loud, lazy, secular, and almost incoherent. It’s also sometimes quite funny, with a wacky vulgarity that made me laugh. There isn’t a bit of wit from cover to cover; instead, this trash-to-the-max sequel to “The Hitman’s Bodyguard” (2017) shamelessly rushes for the lizard brain. In the eyes of American action comedies, we are all reptiles.
Four years after a traumatic encounter with assassin Darius Kincaid (Samuel L. Jackson), formerly triple-A bodyguard Michael Bryce (Ryan Reynolds) has lost his career and possibly his mind. Her therapist suggests an Italian vacation and a sabbatical from the guns and chaos. Yet no sooner had he followed his advice, taking only pepper spray and Chekhov’s pen-knife (old habits die hard), than he was hijacked by Darius’ wife, Sonia ( Salma Hayek), a smoky and rude con artist.
So begins a plot so slender and irrelevant that it hardly deserves to be noted, being nothing more than a framework for senseless car chases, shootings, explosions and a very high number of dead bodies. . Filming in Croatia, Italy, Britain and Slovenia, returning director Patrick Hughes encourages his stars and stuntmen to lead the show. Outrage reigns as a three-way race to stop a demented Greek billionaire (a wasted Antonio Banderas) who plans to use Croatian hackers to tinker with the European electricity grid. Which is apparently located in a single hub in the depths of the ocean.
As the screenplay – from Tom O’Connor (who wrote the first film), Phillip Murphy, and Brandon Murphy – struggles to make sense, the performers retreat to their comfort zones. For Jackson, that means being so laid back at times that he is almost supine; for Reynolds, whose character suffers more abuse than a crash test dummy, that means reminding us that wisecracks are the best weapons. Morgan Freeman appears in a role I’m not going to spoil, and poor Frank Grillo – seemingly unaware he’s in a cartoon – plays a Boston cop turned Interpol agent with beautifully redundant solemnity.
Hayek, luckily, harbors no illusions about Sonia, whose Chaucerian manner with a curse is matched only by her double-D libido and industrial-strength vocal cords. The performance is both grueling and awe-inspiring, making Sonia’s frustrated desire for a child one of the film’s most gruesome subplots. Yet, hearing Sonia lament the disappointing dimensions of her vagina, I also heard the hoof noises from the next movie. Takers for “the bodyguard of the surrogate mother of the hitman’s wife”?
The bodyguard of the hitman’s wife
Rated R for grotesque violence and dirty mouth. Duration: 1 hour 56 minutes. In theaters.