The Definitive Guide to Living in the Capital , Cairo , Egypt

Coming courtesy of The Expendables 3 director, Patrick Hughes, buddy-comedy-action flick, The Hitman’s Bodyguard offers a handful of action, a few sporadic laughs and plenty of disappointments. Unable to utilise its R-rating to great effect or offer anything new to a familiar plot of two characters being at odds with each other before eventually teaming them up to fight for a greater cause.

It all comes together for one big, sloppy cliché, leaving what could have been a fun ride to turn out into a paint-by-numbers mess.

The story follows Michael Bruce (Reynolds channeling his inner Deadpool but without the mask); a once highly-rated executive protection agent working for some of the richest people in the world, who finds his career shattered when one of his high-profile clients is executed. Two years after the fiasco, he is still offering his protection services but mostly to lousy, mid-level clients with drug problems.

That’s before former girlfriend and Interpol agent, Amelia Roussell (Young) summons him to Amsterdam, where she has been tasked to escort a famous hitman, Darius (Jackson) – who also happens to be Michael’s sworn enemy – to the international court where he is to testify against ruthless Belarusian leader, Vladislav Dukhovich (Oldman in a wasted role).

After running into Vladislav’s enforcers on the way to court, however, Amelie puts Darius in Michael’s charge, but getting the unlikely duo to cooperate is just as hard as having them evade the villain’s brute force.

Despite its goofy and somewhat entertaining trailers might suggest, The Hitman’s Bodyguard is terribly generic. The story is sloppy and ridiculously toneless and while some of the jokes do land, and there is a little fun to be had here and there, it never fins its footing in fusing action and R-rated humour – which mainly involves Jackson screaming out ‘mother%^&*r’ at the screen

Conversely, both Reynold and Jackson are game for what’s thrown at them. However, although they do share a decent amount of chemistry, their overall dynamic is a little stiff and their characters a little too cartoonish. The exception to this, however, is Gary Oldman, who has the time of his life as the ruthless Belarusian leader and as far as we’re concerned, he can do no wrong.

However, we can’t say the same for the picture itself. Generic, predictable and just plain lazy, everything about The Hitman’s Bodyguard feels a little off – like it was processed, reprocessed, packed and then repacked a thousand times over before it finally found its way to the big screen.