Freelance

Grade: D+

In Freelance, John Cena has one predominate expression on his face: like he’s looking at a menu and hates the food. The critic for Roger Ebert’s website likened Cena’s face to the look his dog gets when she hears a word she recognizes. That works too. Either way, Freelance – which will probably disappear from theaters quickly – is a lugubrious, laborious experience with straight-to-VOD written all over it. It’s not funny enough, sexy enough, action-packed enough, or movie enough.

Cena can be great if he’s used well, like in Trainwreck. Here, he plays Mason Pettits, a former special forces operative, now living a humble suburban life as a lawyer, husband, and dad to his young daughter. He is provided a backstory of a bad experience at his last job, which we see at the beginning, in a maddening amount of shaky POV shots. His boss (Christian Slater – I would say nice to see him again, but in this?) ropes him in – with a price tag he can’t refuse – to one last job, as a bodyguard for a journalist who has been granted an interview with the normally press-resistant president of the fictional country called Paldonia.

The reporter is played by Alison Brie (The Post, The Disaster Artist, Promising Young Woman). I would say nice to see her again, but in this? Juan Pablo Raba plays Paldonia’s president as an over-the-top, annoying, disgusting, womanizing caricature – except for when the screenplay factory lets us know we’re supposed to like him. The score also holds our hand through it, unsubtly changing tones to match the mood of the scene. Alice Eve does fine work as Cena’s wife back home, and Brie certainly has her moments. Action happens. Stunt men get shot, then do their choreographed jump backwards a second later when their squib goes off. Boxes are checked and the paint is well within the numbers.

Gene Siskel used the same reliable litmus test when evaluating a movie. He’d ask himself if he’d rather see the film itself, or a documentary of these actors and crew having lunch on set. This is the second movie I’ve seen this week with outtakes that play during the end credits. It’s the most interesting part of Freelance, seeing them flub lines, break character, adlib, and generally have more fun than we see in the movie proper.

This is an uninteresting, empty movie. I do give it credit, and am boosting the grade because I admired how Cena’s character was written. Despite troubles and an uncertain future in his home life, he is a good man, faithful to his wife, and turns down ardent advances from Brie. For just one bizarre, random scene, she really wants to get with him, then it never comes up again. She gives him a piece of advice in another scene, in one of the more memorable lines. “Embrace the suck.” You could do that, or just avoid going to see Freelance.

Grade: D+