Ryan Reynolds’ schtick, so irritating for so long, is winning us back, and Free Guy is built around his entire star persona, the self-effacing originality of which José remarks upon. Reynolds plays Guy, a videogame non-player character – an extra, essentially, following a programmed routine within a virtual world – with a lightness and sweetness that defines the tone of the entire film.
We discuss what the film represents about videogame culture and what it discards, the desire for romance that drives the story, what Mike questions about its ending, and more. Free Guy is a charming and entertaining action comedy, whether you know games or not.
The sequel to one of the first films we discussed on Eavesdropping at the Movies, The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard reunites Samuel L. Jackson’s hitman, Ryan Reynolds’ bodyguard, and Salma Hayek’s hitman’s wife – whose role is significantly expanded from the first film’s bit part. The vaguely sketched plot – Antonio Banderas wants to blow up Europe or something, and that’s enough detail – is the wire hanger upon which jokes and comic character interplay are draped, but, crucially, is the comedy successful?
Whether it is or isn’t, and what we read into the audience response, is up for discussion, as is the deployment of the stars’ personas and cinematic histories, what renders Ryan Reynolds’ schtick endearing here where it’s normally irritating, and whether the film’s sexual dimension is overly vulgar or too one-sided.
José has seen The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard twice now, and is no less in thrall to Hayek’s aggressive, wild performance the second time, loudly and enthusiastically responding to it. Mike is much less impressed with the film, but does admit to warming up to it in the second half, after a particularly mad joke that we won’t spoil here (but do in the podcast). If there are more Hitman’s Bodyguard films to come, hopefully with increasingly deliberately clunky titles, we’re up for them.
Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw. If there’s a clunkier title out there, we’d like to see it. The first standalone film in the Fast & Furious series, and the first Mike’s seen at all, while José gave up some years ago, after seeing the first two. But José liked the trailer, and coerced Mike into accompanying him, which means that Mike now gets to force José to do something he doesn’t want to one day.
But, with expectations at an all-time low, Mike can confirm that he, in his words, “did not hate it”. In fact, despite it being obvious trash, with an entire family of awful, lazy jokes – the extended metaphors and puerile insults that The Rock and Jason Statham trade are comedy sinkholes – there’s quite a lot that charms us here. While Mike argues for the creativity and execution of the film’s action, José expounds upon his fondness for its stars, on the one hand through the humour and enthusiasm of The Rock, who Mike (who writes these descriptions) refuses to call Dwayne Johnson; on the other, Statham’s working class charm, which sets him apart from any other English star you’d care to name, all conspicuous products of privileged backgrounds and public schools, and none of whom can claim his level of box office power.
The film travels from one character’s home to another, beginning in London and moving to Samoa, leading us to discuss the film’s star vehicle nature – its stars are two of its producers, and indeed, there’s much in it with regards to their images that is closely controlled and orchestrated, Mike noting in particular the manner in which Hobbs, The Rock’s character, annoyingly laughs off Shaw’s insults, as if to say, “I’m The Rock, I’m very likeable and can take jokes”. But the move to Samoa in particular is one we enjoy, especially Hobbs’ slipper-wielding, affectionate mother, and the way his family and friends act as a unit and support him despite his estrangement from them.
Though we happily expound upon the things we enjoyed about the film, which are several, it is far, far from valuable or unmissable. Mike notes the enthusiastic response from the audience we saw it with, a response that rendered him emotionally bleak at sharing a room with them. Hobbs & Shaw is very well-made, expensively-produced trash, and José, for one, wishes we’d all venerate trash a little less.
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This week the focus is on The Hitman’s Bodyguard and the topics under discussion include: Can an action film that goes through Coventry be any good? Is it important that action scenes are funny? Is Gary Oldman a whore? All valuable questions. All answered in our chat about The Hitman’s Bodyguard. I think.
There is a very marked disillusionment with politics and the world in the better American films of the moment; Safe is a good example. It presents a world where no one is to be trusted, nothing is what it seems, and ‘idealist’ is another name for patsy. The film has an interesting look: the image is too white but also high contrast and slightly grainy. Cape Town has never looked uglier, even the beach scenes. However, it is nice to see a thriller set in Cape Town and the film makes very good use of its locations: one gets a sense of pent-up danger amidst a world not completely known, slightly sleazy and with aspects of developing world infrastructure overlaid with cutting-edge technology. I was lured to the film because it was publicized as Denzel Washington playing a villain but it’s a ‘villain’ as played by a star, i.e. one understands him, the rationale for his actions, and really, he’s the only person with integrity in the agency (aside from the second-ranking star, Ryan Reynolds). Reynolds is the revelation here; with enormous close-ups of him crying, wetting those lovely lower lashes he’s got, a face that seems slightly freckled but worn, the no-longer boyish face of someone in the process of losing his innocence. The telephone sequences with between him and his girlfriend are truly moving and he gives a fully-fledged star performance: he makes you understand, empathise and feel with him. I’ve never quite been taken in by Sam Shepard’s charm; he’s tended to get by on laid-back nonchalance — which sometimes seems like sheer not-giving-a-damn — and handsomeness made palatable by being less than pretty; here he’s definitely cast as the usual WASP prototype but seems to bring something more to it than he usually does; grasping, calculating deceit laced with gravitas (though my mind was mainly focused on how much he’d aged). Ruben Blades appeared and the sound of his voice alone made me happy. I was sad to see him killed. A good thriller.
