Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		5.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

The Hitman's Bodyguard Blu-ray Movie Review

Midnight Run 2.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 19, 2017

Midnight Run established a genial template that a certain subgenre of “road movie” has aped to varying degrees of success. The basic formulation takes two mismatched characters, one of whom is in some sort of danger, and plops them down together in a series of misadventures that provides about equal emphasis on shoot ‘em up set pieces and raucous comedy. The Hitman’s Bodyguard certainly fulfills that basic setup better than most, although it does so with everything routinely “turned up to 11”, which includes some fairly gory gun battles and comedy that routinely relies on expletives that are far from deleted. Michael Bryce (Ryan Reynolds) is a high priced operative in London tasked with protecting various bigwigs, and Bryce is more than a bit pleased he has achieved a so-called Triple A rating of effectiveness (whether or not there is an actual Triple A rating for bodyguards turns into something of a running gag in this film). An opening vignette seems to document the picayune attention to detail Bryce brings to his work, in this case delivering a Japanese arms dealer to safety at the man’s private jet. Everything goes exactly according to plan, which Bryce’s team sums up as “boring is better”, until, that is — it doesn’t. With a dead client on his resume, Michael finds himself demoted to taking less than glamorous jobs whisking various ne’er-do-wells to their appointed rounds. A trial concerning the human rights violations of supposed Belarus dictator Vladislav Dukhovich (Gary Oldman) at The Hague in The Netherlands is having trouble establishing its case, since many potential witnesses end up dead or are in fact too scared to even come testify to begin with, and the one who is shown testifying has his evidence dismissed as hearsay, despite the fact that the film clearly indicates that what the guy is alleging (the murder of his family to keep him “politically correct”) actually happened. That leads to a perhaps desperate gambit on the part of Interpol to get Dukhovich’s former hitman Darius Kincaid (Samuel L. Jackson) to The Hague from London, where Kincaid has been imprisoned for unspecified crimes. Kincaid willingly agrees to go since Interpol agrees to free Kincaid’s wife Sonia (Salma Hayek), who has been swept up in Kincaid’s troubles and is jailed herself.

There’s absolutely no question where The Hitman’s Bodyguard is going nor in fact how it’s going to get there, and soon enough Mike’s ex- girlfriend Amelia Roussel (Élodie Yung), the Interpol agent tasked with getting Kincaid to The Hague, has to call in her erstwhile lover after a mole reveals her whereabouts and most of her team is slaughtered (in one of the film’s bloodier sequences). Kind of interestingly, at least insofar as these things typically go, The Hitman’s Bodyguard doesn’t even try to mask who the mole is, a structural artifice that arguably deprives the film of at least some suspense, though it has to be admitted that usually films that have a conceit like this never really hide the “inside” villain’s identity very well to begin with.

That leaves the rest of the film with Mike and Kincaid more or less tethered to each other, with both Dukhovich’s henchmen and the mole’s assassins after the pair, with hilarity (and occasional violence) ensuing. And the fact is The Hitman’s Bodyguard is often very funny. There’s very little subtlety in the comedy most of the time, but it lands more often than it doesn’t, a relatively rarity these days. Some of the funniest bits aren’t actually that germane to the main “road” element of the film, including a great set of vignettes with Sonia in her cell, which she shares with a hapless fellow inmate (I won’t spoil the gags involved, other than to say they’re at least giggle worthy).

What’s a little unusual here is the “reversal” of types, with regard to Midnight Run’s original formulation. Here it’s the ostensible prisoner who is in fact a “take no prisoners” type, at least verbally, with the ostensible bounty hunter the uptight, laconic sort. That’s more or less the mirror image of the De Niro — Grodin outing, but it exploits the same “opposites distract” (so to speak) ambience and tends to work perfectly well. The film is too calculated to ever work up any real suspense as to what ultimately is going to happen, but it’s so relentlessly energetic that few will probably complain too loudly.

One of the most refreshing things about The Hitman’s Bodyguard is the increased realization of what a winning comedy actor Ryan Reynolds can be, when given the proper kind of material. Reynolds, who arguably saw his star falter a bit with outings like Green Lantern, has really proven himself quite capable lately in any number of films, including of course Deadpool, a film to which The Hitman’s Bodyguard actually has some manic tonal similarities, albeit without the purported superhero aspect. Reynolds’ Michael is a decent guy who finds himself buffeted by the vagaries of fate, but who isn’t going to go down without a fight, and he plays wonderfully well off of Jackson’s kind of punkish Kincaid. Also wringing quite a few laughs, and maybe even a few more tender emotions, out of the material is an effective Hayek, who busts a few “take no prisoners” moves herself in a fun sequence documenting how Sonia and Kincaid met back in the day.

The Hitman's Bodyguard Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Hitman's Bodyguard is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. The IMDb lists a whole slew of digital cameras that were used to capture the often nicely scenic imagery that is exploited in this film, and the IMDb further lists this as having been finished at a 4K DI. Detail levels are uniformly superb throughout the presentation, and compositing of elements like split screen moments have resulted in no appreciable loss of detail. Aside from one notable exception (a late interrogation sequence), the film is kind of refreshingly free of a ton of heavily graded scenes, and as such the palette tends to reside in a much more realistic territory, though there is an emphasis on cooler shades of blue and gray at several junctures. Fine detail is often quite remarkable, including such less than savory sights as the mottled face of Dukhovich after he's supposedly been poisoned, as well as a couple of fairly gruesome injuries suffered by various characters. Shadow detail is largely excellent, with just a couple of arguable deficits in some nighttime scenes. A couple of flashback scenes have been intentionally "distressed" to look "grainy", and are at times slightly desaturated, but again there's really no material loss in detail levels.

The Hitman's Bodyguard Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Hitman's Bodyguard has an extremely enjoyable Dolby Atmos track which provides all of the pinpoint placement of effects that audiophiles have come to expect from this relatively new codec. Everything from fantastic panning activity during some of the chase sequences to nice midair placement of effects when sequences involving helicopters or the like makes this track almost constantly immersive. There is routinely smart directionality at play even in quieter dialogue scenes, and many outdoor sequences have nice, nuanced attention paid to ambient environmental effects. Of course there is the standard issue action adventure fare in terms of the sound mix, including some extremely boisterous LFE courtesy of explosions and gunfire, and all of those effects resonate with authority and even bombast. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly. Fidelity is top notch and dynamic range extremely wide on this reference quality track.

The Hitman's Bodyguard Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Director's Commentary features Patrick Hughes.


• Outtakes (1080p; 5:23)


• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 5:01)


• Extended Scenes (1080p; 3:21)


• Alternate Scenes

  Breaking Protocol (1080p; 1:15)

  Confrontation on the Roof (1080p; 2:09)

• The Hitman's Bodyguard: A Love Story (1080p; 8:56) is a genial enough EPK with some good interviews.


• Hitman vs. Bodyguard (1080p; 4:23) is a bit more generic, offering overviews of the two main characters.


• Dangerous Women (1080p; 8:22) profiles the two main female characters in the film, and also features some decent interviews.


• Big Action in a Big World (1080p; 7:53) looks at some of the set pieces in the film.

The Hitman's Bodyguard Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

If you have a certain tolerance for over the top potty mouthed humor, The Hitman's Bodyguard may well delight you as much as the at least relatively tamer Midnight Run. I personally found the film routinely hilarious, and the action sequences are well staged if awfully predictable. In fact, the entire film is pretty predictable, but with the winning charisma and teamwork of Reynolds and Jackson, it hardly matters. Technical merits are first rate, and The Hitman's Bodyguard comes Recommended.