Review of the action comedy “The Freelance Bodyguard” by Pierre Morel

Pierre Morel’s action-comedy “The Freelance Bodyguard” with the star of this genre John Cena in the title role is being released. The adventures of a former special forces soldier, an ambitious journalist and a dictator in a fictional Latin American country appeared Yulia Shagelman not so funny that the authors of the film could be forgiven for their emotional deafness and the absolute inappropriateness of the plot they invented against the backdrop of events taking place in the real world.

John Cena is one of the few former professional wrestlers who managed to make a career in film. Of course, he is far from Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who turned his almost superhuman physical shape and somewhat bonkers charm into a source of income comparable to class A actors. Cine, in addition to large studio franchises like “Fast and the Furious,” has to work in both TV series and voice acting, and in such mid-budget films as “Freelance Bodyguard,” which are unlikely to have great box office prospects. Hollywood usually calls on middle-class European directors with a reputation for “strong craftsmanship” to produce such films—in this case, Pierre Morel, best known for “Taken” (2007), which relaunched Liam Neeson’s career. And they give something to the idols of yesteryear, whose names are still recognizable, but the years of glory and quality projects are far behind them – and in this case, this is Christian Slater, who plays the head of a private military company.

His Sebastian is a former colleague of the hero Cena, whose name is Mason Pettits (in the film there are several jokes about the discrepancy between this surname and Cena’s articles, but in the Russian dubbing they, which are already not very sparkling, do not sound at all). Since childhood, he wanted to help people, so he went to study to become a lawyer, but then he realized what a boring life awaited him if he chose this job, and chose service in hot spots over it. One of the operations ended in failure – all his comrades died, and Mason himself received a back injury. So he returned to practicing law, and at the same time fell into depression, for which he has such good reasons as having a respected profession, a house in the suburbs, a beautiful blonde wife (Alice Eve) and a little daughter (Molly McCann).

Our hero is pulled out of his dreary everyday life by Sebastian, who managed to found a well-earning PMC during the time they didn’t see each other. He invites Mason to escort journalist Claire Wellington (Alison Brie) to Paldonia, where she is to interview “the last pure autocrat in the Western Hemisphere,” Juan Arturo Venegas (Juan Pablo Raba). Claire, like Mason, is going through a personal and professional crisis: she was once a star of political journalism, but due to a scandal with unverified sources, she lost her reputation and, horror of horrors, slipped into gossip columns. She perceives the invitation of Venegas, who has long refused to communicate with the press, as a way to regain her former glory.

The situation is complicated by the fact that Venegas, according to Mason, is responsible for the death of his friends – after all, they just went to his country to eliminate him, but did not have time. That’s why he hates the dictator, but still agrees to work, just to finally get out of his boring house. When he meets him in person, Venegas begins to infuriate him even more with his white suit and slippery manners, but Mason does not have time to immerse himself in these experiences. On the way to the country residence, the presidential motorcade is ambushed by some “rebels”, all the guards are killed, and Venegas himself, Claire and Mason remain alive only thanks to the latter’s professionalism.

Now these three will have to run through the jungle from people in camouflage, determined to finish what they started. In the process, it turns out that all this turmoil is a coup d’etat, started by Venegas’ nephew (Sebastian Eslava) with the support of mercenaries, but not like Sebastian and his team, but bad ones (for some reason they are from South Africa). However, the nephew is just a pawn in the hands of global corporations who are planning to lay their paw on the natural resources of Paldonia, but Venegas, who for twenty years in a row allowed them to do exactly this, without, of course, depriving himself of his beloved, is not at all so terrible, because Now I’ve changed my mind.

So that the audience does not delve too deeply into these dubious intrigues from both a moral and geopolitical point of view, Morel entertains them with action scenes and jokes. The first ones noticeably suffer from a lack of budget and turn out to be rather scanty, while the second ones more often cause awkwardness than laughter. Raba almost succeeds in making her human-faced dictator charming, but Cena and Brie interact with him and each other with the naturalness of wooden dolls. The message of the film seems to boil down to the fact that autocracy based on foreign PMCs is not so bad as long as the dictator knows how to negotiate with the opposition and does not put too much pressure on the people. But you shouldn’t think deeply about this, because during the closing credits John Cena will once again joke about penises, which means that everything in this world is good and correct.