This haphazard comedy-action film mostly plays like the script was written on the discarded roach of a smoked joint, but the likability of the cast makes up for a lot. WWE champ turned thespian John Cena, who always seems to know how weird he looks with his swollen torso and tiny hips, stars as soldier-turned-lawyer family man Mason Pettits. Having never got over the trauma of a mission that turned sour in the lamely named fictional Latin American nation of Paldonia, Mason nurses a sense of failure that’s undermining his marriage to wife Jenny (Alice Eve, wasted in the role) as they try to raise a young daughter (Molly McCann) together.
One day, former comrade in arms Sebastian (Christian Slater, just passing through) now running a security company, offers Mason a one-off gig protecting journalist Claire Wellington (Alison Brie, always a pleasure) on a trip to autocrat-run Paldonia. Although mostly known for doing fluffy celebrity interviews, Claire has managed to land an opportunity to interview Paldonia’s preening president Venegas (Juan Pablo Raba, aptly smarmy). But as Mason, Claire and Venegas are en route to the palace, an attempted coup requires Mason to protect with extreme force. Soon, dozens of extras are covered in fake blood as squibs explode and cars careen into the sky, resulting in a fatality rate that recalls the kind of pulpy action-comedies of the 1990s that Arnold Schwarzenegger used to specialise in. The difference is that Cena, although more cartoonish in appearance, has sharper comic timing than Arnie, and these days it’s not considered emasculating to have a bit of banter with Brie’s character that reveals they’ve both read Hannah Arendt on the roots of fascism.
That said, the film’s cynicism about the politics of developing nations is quite jejune, and about as plausible as the suggestion that Venegas’s icy white double-breasted suit, with gold buttons positioned right over his nipples, could be secretly bulletproof. The trio’s foes never seem capable, for all their firepower, of ever shooting straight enough to more than graze one of the leads with a bullet, while the gender dynamics are not terribly progressive. Claire is allowed to have some credibility as a journalist, but she spends most of the film either ogling Mason’s muscles or squealing in distress as mayhem erupts around her. Brie actually sounds like a piglet that’s not sure if it’s being slaughtered or starring in a porn film. Even so, the package as a whole, with its sun-bleached palette and colour correction that makes its blues pop, is reasonably entertaining, perfectly suited to watching on an airplane while flying to your next holiday destination.
• Freelance is on digital platforms and DVD from 1 July.
