 |
| Join us on Facebook! |
Watching
The Hitman's Bodyguard was
like watching a remake of Midnight Run but
if it was from the writer of Mr Bean's fucking
Holiday. Beat for beat this film
followed the DeNiro/Grodin classic but if all the jokes and charm of
the original had been replaced by somebody that had only heard of the
concept of 'wit' after having had a child explain it to them through
the expressive art of dance. Ryan Reynolds is a bodyguard; Samuel L
Jackson a hitman. The former must escort the latter from prison to
court as the two avoid ambushes from other interested parties and
bicker their way from A to B. Hilarity ensues.. is presumably what
the writer wrote into the script with every intention of eventually
going back and adding that hilarity.. before something got in the way
and prevented them. I'm assuming death. Or at the very least I hope
it was death because if they see the film that's finally hit the
screen then they will likely end up dying of fucking shame regardless.
To
say this film rams every one of its jokes into the ground would be to
credit it with having had any jokes in the first place. I know where
the jokes were meant to be because the intrusively patronising music
would go into cartoon-comedy mode and the cast would get as close as
they could to simply turning to the camera and doing a wink so
fucking hard that you'd think they were having a fucking stroke.
However, despite every single attempt at humour in this movie being as
close to actual comedy as acquiring a triple-split hernia whilst on a
particularly rough horse ride, they repeat each 'joke' over and over
again. There are several times in which an overly sentimental moment
is undercut with swearing, multiple situations are compared to the
smell of a 'butt', and when all else fails the camera simply cuts to
Samuel L Jackson saying the word “Motherfucker”. In fact this
last point is even referenced in the film itself when Reynold's
character says something along the lines of, “that word
motherfucker is used so often that he's going to take all of the fun
out of it”, and I completely agree. Reynolds is essentially playing
the same old role that he always does however out of the two of them
he's the Danny Glover half of the buddy movie combo that really
doesn't have time for any of this shit. Never have I related to a
character more.
In
many ways, I like to think of The Hitman's Bodyguard as
a litmus test for fucking idiocy. The only possible way that a person
could laugh with it is if they were raised in a shoe-box by rats that
treated their parental responsibility with apathy at best. My friend
Kris loved it. As did the majority of the audience that
were in the cinema with us too, to be honest. You can imagine my
annoyance I'm sure. With every giggle or outright laugh that I heard
I suddenly began to understand more and more how we'd had Brexit, or
President Trump, or why bleach feels the need to have 'do not
drink' written on the fucking bottle. At one point there's a chase
through Amsterdam and we see a prostitute in her window and the
audience I was with laughed. But I'm not even sure this was meant to
be a joke? And if it was, could somebody please explain it to me? Was
the joke simply that we got to see a pair of tits? Because I was
aware that I was watching a pair of tits the moment that Samuel L
Jackson and Ryan Reynolds began embarrassing themselves with their
forced attempt at banter. Or was the joke simply that seeing a
prostitute in a window is a bit strange to us? Because if that's the
case I've been to Amsterdam. I once saw a gang of men paying a Euro a
minute to masturbate in a titty-booth as two strangers robotically
fucked on a revolving floor in the centre of the room. So I'm sorry
for my life-experiences but a ropey Dutch tart with her baps out
doesn't really do much for my funny bones these days.
As
we hit the motorway on the drive home from the cinema and as I was
debating whether or not I should push my friend out of the fucking
car door and speed away from him forever, I asked what he'd liked so
much about the film. His response was simply that “it was funny”.
The odds of him being pushed out of the door increased.
Diplomatically I countered with the rather valid point that despite
what he thought, he was actually a complete fucking idiot and
completely wrong. “Yeah.. well how come everybody else was laughing
too then”, he responded. I tried to push him out. Damn those fucking
child locks. Now I suppose you could argue that humour is subjective
and what one person finds amusing another person might not due to there being no scientific way of proving if something is actually
funny... unfortunately. And although the elitist and comedy snob in
me doesn't want to end that argument there, let's assume that is
true... even though it isn't. For the sake of this argument, we now
live in a world in which Michael McIntyre is technically as funny as
somebody who actually is funny like say Stewart Lee or Doug Stanhope,
simply because his audiences likes him. What a miserable fucking
world we now live in.
However
almost nothing in The Hitman's Bodyguard is
actually very original at all. As mentioned, the buddy-bickering and
plot-beats are from, at least, Midnight Run. The
film often uses inappropriately light music over scenes of violence
as can be seen in a million other movies ranging from the use of
Queen in Shaun Of The Dead to
even Juice Newton's Angel Of The Morning in
fucking Deadpool. In
fact, there's even a scene in the beginning of The Hitman's
Bodyguard in which we're treated
to a drunk man whose intoxication is played for laughs, and do you
know who plays that drunk man? Richard E fucking Grant... and do we
really think this film will one day be mentioned in the same alcohol-reeking breath as the holiday-by-mistake masterpiece of Withnail
And I? Because that's literally
about as likely as Donald Trump ripping off his face and revealing
that his whole miserable presidency has actually been a massive
episode of Punk'd with
him being played by Ashton Kutcher in a Jabba the Hutt mask and a
pubey blonde head-wig. But that's not going to happen, is it. Because
as unbelievable as Trump might be, Kutcher's acting ability is even
fucking worse.
My
point is that, in this 'subjectively valid' world in which McIntyre is
considered as legitimately good a comedian as Stewart Lee simply
because he can make his stupid audience laugh, surely a comedian that
badly delivers somebody else's jokes would still be considered
objectively terrible? Because- what have they done? They've just
repeated the work of somebody else. By that logic a fucking parrot
that's been sat next to a television playing Monty Python
would be at risk of technically
being as funny as John fucking Cleese. And The Hitman's
Bodyguard has no original jokes
of its own at all. You might find these jokes funny if you've not
heard them in their original and superior context, but by just ripping
them off the metaphorical comedian that's stolen them would surely be
considered a bit of a shit-house? Which therefore makes this film a
bit of a shit-house too.. even if you laughed at it. And trust me when I say that it's taking all of my strength not to end that sentence with
“you fucking idiot”. But look on the bright-side - there's more to
this movie than its terrible stolen jokes and forced banter... it
actually does have an alright car chase and a less-than-shit
shoot-out. Except, this is the year of Baby Driver and
John Wick: Chapter Two. A
year in which an
alright car chase and a less than shit shoot-out doesn't quite make
up for the giant-sinister cock-wart of a problem that the rest of the
film faces. So... thanks for reading, motherfucker, and see you next time.
No comments :
Post a Comment