Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard’ on HBO Max, a Desperate Action-Violence Nonsense-Comedy That Wastes Scads of Talent

The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard — now on HBO Max after a brief theatrical run in Summer of 2021 — is a classic case of a sequel nobody asked for, because big-studio bean-counters aren’t technically considered people. I guess 2017’s The Hitman’s Bodyguard was enough of an in-the-green accounting success to justify bringing back Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson for another trip around the mismatched-buddy-comedy idiot track, and beefing up Salma Hayek’s role to make it a third-wheel moron excursion. The first movie was a suck-ass movie, so here’s hoping this one improves upon it, but I have my doubts.

THE HITMAN’S WIFE’S BODYGUARD: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: I was TERRIFIED that I’d have to try to remember what happened in the first movie, but thankfully, we get a recap. Turns out, it doesn’t really matter, and all we have to know is that one-time superstar bodyguard Michael Bryce (Reynolds) lost his security license because of what happened before, namely, agreeing to protect a superstar assassin like Darius Kincaid (Jackson). Michael’s really busted up about that. His career, his passion, his reason to exist, just kaput. His psychotherapist suggests he take a vacation and try to find his “future self,” so he jets to Italy and works out his emotional issues by calling himself on his phone and leaving long, diarylike voicemails to his “future self.” Meanwhile, Aristotle Papadapolous (Antonio Banderas) does some terrorist shit in Greece, establishing himself as the movie’s villain. We’ll get several scenes of Aristotle doing stuff from here on out, but rest assured, not a single one of them is important.

Michael’s chilling on a lounge chair in Italy, reading The Secret (laugh, DAMMIT) when a megaviolent brouhaha kicks up around him, leaving many, many people bleeding to death from bullet wounds. The perpetrator of this mayhem is Sonia Kincaid (Hayek), who really needs Michael’s help to rescue Darius from whatever stupidass predicament he’s in, which disrupted their honeymoon and their attempts to sire a child. It’s important to know that Sonia is wackadooazoozoohonkhonkhonk. She’s always cursing up a storm and killing folks and belligerently shouting things in Spanish while killing those folks and acting in a generally unpredictable fashion. She’s the type of character who Daffy Duck would define by holding up a flag with a screw and a baseball on it. When all else fails, she quips loudly about her boobs, like, stop looking at my boobs, my boobs are amazing, mind the boobs, etc. Good for her, I say, and I mean that in general. Be yourself, Sonia. You do you. Consider the boobs very respectfully minded.

I think Michael and Sonia end up in Croatia, either before or after they spring Darius. I can’t remember. Doesn’t matter in the least, of course. Mindless death and destruction will occur wherever they are, no matter how convoluted the plot is that puts them there. And that plot is, an Interpol agent played by Frank Grillo nabs them and threatens to put them in the pokey unless they help him stop Aristotle’s fiendish deeds. Seems airtight. Couldn’t come up with a better plan if I thought about it for less than three seconds. So off they go a-foiling the terrorist scheme, Darius and Sonia also trying to honeymoon and make a baby as tagalong Michael desperately clings to his commitment: No guns, and nurture your future self. But he’ll be violent regardless. Of course he’ll be violent. This isn’t the type of movie in which he wouldn’t be violent.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard Bayhemizes well-worn buddy-formula stuff like Rush Hour and Lethal Weapon. If you need to scratch that particular itch, go watch Midnight Run for the tenth time.

Performance Worth Watching: A body has to try pretty hard to not like Hayek in any context, even when a garbage movie like this misuses her comedic talent and demands that she scream her lines and go Mt. Everest OTT.

Memorable Dialogue: “YOU FINGER-LICKING SHIT MONKEY DONKEY-BLOWING MOTHER F—ER!” — Sonia writes a poem about a flower.

Sex and Skin: A long shot of Hayek straddling Jackson, both clothed, as Reynolds is forced to listen from inside a locked car trunk. This is “funny.”

Our Take: About 40 minutes into The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard, I was praying into the godless void for it to be over. Reynolds has the remarkable ability to weave trash into a few laughs, but that’s only when he’s got something to work with. The script here is dire, gormless dreck, but it certainly thinks it’s funnier than it is. Hayek puts everything she’s got into it, but the project is so hopeless, it’s a Sisyphusian endeavor. Jackson doesn’t even phone in his performance, more like texting it in with a couple of vague emojis. When all else fails, they yell a lot over the din of explosions. This is a talented cast, left to flounder. What a waste.

I did not care about a single thing that happened in this cynical, ugly, grating, unfunny, obnoxious, witless, visually atrocious, pointlessly complicated, pointlessly crude, pointlessly pointless movie. It’s pieced together out of grating “ironic” needle drops, cheapo CGI, the wheezy median values of its stars’ personae and jokes from the reject piles of other movies. It isn’t sure whether to be a satire of gratuitously violent action movies or just be gratuitously violent. If it had a single brain cell, it would have vamoosed for the TON 618 quasar in hopes of greener pastures. I did not like it very much.

Our Call: SKIP IT, extra hard. The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard is an extra suck-ass movie.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.