But throughout this entire “ yeahhhh who’s ready for a real GUY’s movie” opening, all I could wonder was if director Patrick Hughes had seen any movies since the 2012 McG film This Means War (a better and more interesting movie than The Hitman’s Bodyguard, incidentally.) Even as a heterosexual woman with no desire to own a gun, let alone a foam-molded wall of them, I’m pretty susceptible to this kind of ultrabasic glamour. The Hitman’s Bodyguard opens with what I can only describe as an ad for masculinity, some third-rate–James Bond, rich-spy fantasy complete with an attractive sleeping woman in the California King bed. These movies are the cinematic equivalent of metal washers or xanthan gum: Someone has to make them, they keep people employed, and you can go your whole life without seeing or thinking about them and get through just fine. This does not mean that we need to concern ourselves with them if we don’t want to: Unlike other “bad” movies of the summer of 2017, these aren’t symptoms of market bloat like Transformers: The Last Knight or corporate fever dreams like The Emoji Movie.

This week I had a similar feeling, though with a less positive aftertaste, for the late-summer dreck The Hitman’s Bodyguard, so I guess this is the world’s way of telling me that, yes, they do make movies like this anymore. The Hitman’s Bodyguard? Photo: Jack English/Summit Entertainment and Millenium Media.Ī couple weeks ago, while reviewing the sub-B, Halle Berry–starring throwaway Kidnap, I marveled almost admiringly at the fact that anyone even made movies like this anymore.

The hitmans bodyguard