6.6 | / 10 |
Users | 3.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 3.7 |
The world's top bodyguard gets a new client, a hit man who must testify at the International Court of Justice. They must put their differences aside and work together to make it to the trial on time.
Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Samuel L. Jackson, Gary Oldman, Salma Hayek, Elodie YungAction | 100% |
Comedy | 7% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: Dolby Atmos
English: Dolby TrueHD 7.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: Dolby Digital 2.0
English SDH, Spanish
Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (1 BD, 1 DVD)
UV digital copy
DVD copy
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (locked)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 5.0 | |
Audio | 5.0 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
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.
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 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.
- Breaking Protocol (1080p; 1:15)
- Confrontation on the Roof (1080p; 2:09)
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.
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