Freelance (2023)

Directed by Pierre Morel. Starring John Cena, Alison Brie, Juan Pablo Raba, Marton Csokas, Christian Slater, Sebastián Eslava, Alice Eve.

A paint-by-numbers action-comedy that’s too lazy to even pick up the brush. Ex-Special Forces member Cena is recruited by an old associate (Slater) to act as bodyguard for a disgraced journalist (Brie) traveling to a fictional Latin American country to interview their dictatorial president (Raba). You know what happens next, but who cares? Not anyone involved, best I can tell, as I haven’t seen Cena this uncharismatic and stiff onscreen since his debut in The Marine, and the usually perky Brie phones in her amazement at this third-rate danger-filled predicament. Since the hero is still in love with his bitter, estranged wife (Eve), there’s no romance between the main characters, making an attempted seduction scene particularly pointless as it comes, goes, and gets forgotten in a snap. Best I can tell, Raba’s cardboard stereotype is supposed to be weird and colorful, but even his energy level is muted to the point where he comes off like an exhausted sketchy comedy actor. Pierre Morel has done his share of action films (District 13, Taken, Peppermint, et al)to mixed results, but the action scenes here are too cheap and amateurish to be described as “perfunctory”, more likely to inspire yawns or derision than a quickening pulse. The opening POV sequence with inane voiceover tells you all you need to know about the lack of creativity to come; buckle up or bail, it’s gonna be one of those kinds of movies…

26/100