Jackson, Salma Hayek and Ryan Reynolds have a few funny exchanges, and there are a couple of physical shtick routines so over the top it’s as if they dusted off the Monty Python playbook for a modern-day action film – but there are far more misfires than direct comedic/dramatic hits in this blood-drenched, explosion-riddled, live-action cartoon of a film.
Jackson returns as Darius Kincaid, a notorious hit man with hundreds of kills, and Reynolds is Michael Bryce, a former elite bodyguard trying to get in touch with his sensitive side.
Reynolds is an established master of self-deprecating, quick-witted humor, and he takes it to the next level here as Bryce is a bundle of open vulnerability, much to the disgust of the rough-and-tumble Kincaid, who drops F-bombs this way and that and tells Bryce to man up and get on board with the mission.
Frank Grillo is one of my favorite on-screen tough guys, but he looks as if he wandered in from a very different movie as Bobby O’Neill, an Interpol agent who hates being stationed in Europe and wants only to go home to Boston.
There are callbacks to gags from the original movie involving nuns, Bryce at one point being oblivious to the chaos happening behind him and the insufferable pop song “The Sign” by Ace of Base – but the problem is, those jokes weren’t all that funny in the first place.
Meanwhile, Sonia, who is supposedly a world-class con artist capable of pulling off elaborate and sophisticated schemes but is bat-bleep crazy to the point where her temper fits often endanger the lives of everyone around her, yearns to become a mother, even though she will most certainly be one of the absolute worst mothers in the history of moms. Sonia takes a motherly interest in Bryce, who clearly has mommy issues, which leads to some oddball moments, e.g., one minute Sonia is cradling Bryce like a baby, the next she’s feeding him lithium and telling him it’s a painkiller.