THE HITMAN’S WIFE’S BODYGUARD
Directed by Patrick Hughes
Certificate: 15
☆☆☆

AH, the summer blockbuster! Oh how we have missed you!

Except, maybe, on this showing, we haven’t.

The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard is a big ticket of a performance, an action comedy with household names, plenty of crashes, bangs and wallops and a mixture of over-the-top cartoon-style violence and what the makers imagine are tickle-the-rib oneliners.

It feels like a paint-by-numbers Studio effort, the type of movie that in those innocent, pre-pandemic days would grace the multiplexes at the start of the school holidays. With a plot that jumps from exotic location to exotic location, it has summer escapism as its calling card.

In this sequel to The Hitman’s Bodyguard, Bryce (Ryan Reynolds) has lost his licence to be a bodyguard, is trying to chill out after a life of spilling blood and guts, and is visiting a therapist to get over some of the naughty stuff he’s been involved in.

But trouble quickly appears as he lounges on a beach in the form of assassin Sonia (Salma Hayek), who needs Bryce’s help to find her husband, hitman Darius (Samuel L Jackson). He’s been nabbed by mobsters and she wants Bryce to be part of the rescue effort.

While doing so in a variety of scenic spots, they get roped into foiling a plot involving a Greek terrorist Aristotle Papadopoulos (Antonio Banderas) who, like a deranged version of the economist Yanis Varoufakis, believes the EU has badly treated his mother country and seeks revenge.

It comes in the form of a dastardly, James Bond-style scam to take down Europe’s electrical circuits using a giant drill. It’s up to the trio to stop him, while swearing their lines as loudly as possible, and firing heavy weaponry at anything that moves.

The vibe is Steven Seagal meets Tommy Cooper, and is so preposterous that it actually has some charm – though this may just be a case of absence of last year’s summer blockbusters has made this heart grow fonder.

What grates is the constant shouting of ludicrous lines, the worn out clichés that are prevalent throughout and Sonia’s infatuation with motherhood, which is a regular refrain but makes no sense in the context of the plot or the “laughs” teased out.

But you wouldn’t go to see a action comedy of this type expecting anything else, so in that way, it very much succeeds in its aims.

Reynolds, who bears the brunt of much of the physical comedy, is perfect for this type of role and attacks it all with an obvious relish.