The Hitman’s Wife Bodyguard is a comedy with not one legitimate laugh, and an action movie where cars keep blowing up while the A-listers yell at each other, as though that were inherently amusing or entertaining.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
Terrible green screen, globs of digital blood, and record-scratch sound effects in place of actual jokes are only potholes along the road for a summer movie that knows what it is, and is slightly less afraid to embrace that than its previous iteration was.
The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard improves on its 2017 predecessor only insofar as it runs 20 minutes shorter.
The main novelty, and the film’s primary pleasure, is the commitment of its cast to its bloody, profane vapidity.
Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard is a marginally better movie than “The Hitman’s Bodyguard.” But that’s kind of like saying that getting stabbed in the gut is marginally better than getting stabbed in the neck.
The Hollywood Reporter by John DeFore
While the team-up still fails to become more than the sum of its parts, at least we can appreciate Hayek’s enthusiasm for the over-the-top role.
Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard – a title, by the way, that is mostly misleading outside of a single scene where Michael serves as Sonia’s bodyguard – has a few brief moments of joy or wit. But most of those moments rely on the audience’s recognition of the all-too-famous cast (such as being delighted at seeing Banderas and Hayek share the screen once more, even with Banderas playing the bad guy). This film, even more than its surprisingly successful predecessor, is exhausting and obnoxious. A few good lines don’t save a slapdash, snarky mess.
Reynolds has made a name for himself with fun action movies and, though this isn't necessarily his strongest or most successful franchise, it does deliver laughs and an exciting ride despite Michael Bryce essentially being the same character Reynolds has played countless times before. Even if Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard is absurd, it makes for the big, dumb fun movie experience perfect for the summer season.
So is it, you know, fun? At times it is; at others it’s exhausting. Let’s call the whole thing fun-xhausting.
For audiences craving shoot-‘em-up carnage, the sequel contains an abundance of explosions, car crashes and kill shots, although the strained air of hip irreverence soon turns suffocatingly stale.