Prime Time: Freelance (2023)

An action comedy that puts John Cena in the lead role, but forgets about giving him any decent action or comedy moments to work with, Freelance is the movie equivalent of a very wet raspberry blown in the face of unsuspecting viewers. I had already heard some negative opinions on it, but I made the common mistake of thinking "how bad could it be?" It was bad, very bad indeed.

Cena plays Mason Pettits, an ex-special forces man who takes on a routine job that should give him a large payday for very little effort. Yeah, like that always works out. He is escorting a journalist (Claire Wellington, played by Alison Brie) on her way to an interview with a dictator (Venegas, played by Juan Pablo Raba). Unfortunately, all three find themselves in trouble when they end up amidst a military coup. Pettits needs to keep people safe, despite wanting nothing more than deadly revenge against Venegas, due to the dicactor causing the death of a number of his military colleagues some time ago.

Although director Pierre Morel has been helming various action movies for the past two decades, he doesn't seem to have the ability to fix a weak script, and Jacob Lentz makes his feature film writing debut with one hell of a weak script. The characters are paper-thin (Pettits is unhappy with his later career choice while he is "just" a lawyer, and he has a wife and daughter to consider nowadays, while both Brie and Raba seem to have one main moment each, a point in their journey that changes the direction of their lives), the comedy is non-existent, and the plotting is lazy and careless. Not one of the action sequences impress, and it's generally impossible to care about main characters who seem quite invincible from their first moments onscreen anyway.

Cena is a fun and likable screen presence, and can also be very funny, but you wouldn't get that impression from this film. There are a lot more laughs gleaned from his role in the 2024 Oscar ceremony than there are gleaned from this. This is a laugh-free zone. Brie is someone I have enjoyed in a number of roles, but she struggles to do as well in feature films as she does on the small screen. Maybe I am forgetting some of her better work, maybe she just isn't a good fit for lead roles like this one. Raba is the most fun of the three, simply due to his character being so exuberant and unguarded, especially compared to how others expect hiim to be. Christian Slater has a couple of minutes of screentime, Marton Csokas is the coup leader, and Alice Eve and young Molly McCann play the wife and daughter, respectively, of our main character, with Eve reduced to being the kind of female who asks her husband to leave their home before spending most of their time worrying about when her husband might return safely.

Although I know that I'm exaggerating, I feel that I've taken at least just as much time and care writing this review as Lentz took in writing the script. It's not laughably incompetent, nor is it unwatchable. It's just thrown together, a collage of beige made from the paint samples left at the very back of the B & Q stockroom, and many viewers will struggle to even stay focused on it as it weaves a sleep-inducing spell.

3/10

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