Sometimes you leave a comedy having laughed uncontrollably throughout the film. Other times you leave realizing that the funniest parts of the film were already shown to you during the trailer. Sadly, the latter experience is what I had after watching The Hitman’s Bodyguard. That in no way means that I thought this was a terrible film. It hit the marks it needed to, when it needed to, for the most part. Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson had fantastic chemistry on-screen as Michael Bryce and Darius Kincaid respectively. The rest of the film however was your typical “paint by numbers” action-comedy. The basic plot of the film is that two enemies are forced to team up to escape a dire situation. For such a basic plot I expected there to be a lot more comedy involved to get us through the rest of the film. Instead we got the same flat jokes over and over again. Most of the film’s comedy actually came from Samuel L. Jackson’s character. I was expecting him to be funny, but I was expecting more from Ryan Reynolds. Reynolds is known for his comedic roles in film and could have elevated this film so much if he was given better material to work with. The writers maybe should have given more of the comedic lines to him and left Jackson’s character a tad more serious. Élodie Yung did an okay job as Amelia Roussel, but her role was not substantial enough for me to buy into her connection to Michael Bryce. Salma Hayek was hilarious as Darius’ wife Sonia, but her role in the film was also limited and left one wanting a little more. Gary Oldman on the other hand should have been in the film even less than he was. His Russian accent was terrible and I felt like he was mailing it in the entire time. On a positive note the film has some great action and chase sequences. The director Patrick Hughes clearly learned a lot from filming The Expendables 3 and transferred it to this film. The fight sequences with Reynolds were very well choreographed. With some better writing this film could have easily been the best comedy of the year. The studio did a great job marketing the film and it has very little competition to go up against for the rest of August. Therefore it should make a decent chunk of change and make back its low budget. I give The Hitman’s Bodyguard a Normal 6.8/10. I’d be willing to see Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson work together on a sequel as long as it has better writing and the box office of this film warrants it. Also not once was “I Will Always Love You” played during the film. That was a big missed opportunity.