Freelance

Directed by Pierre Morel, Freelance follows an ex-special forces operative (John Cena’s Mason Pettits) as he agrees to provide security for a journalist (Alison Brie’s Claire Wellington) interviewing a dictator (Juan Pablo Raba’s President Juan Venegas). Filmmaker Morel, working from Jacob Lentz’s screenplay, delivers a low-rent actioner that’s been littered with a whole host of eye-rolling elements (eg the unconvincing relationship between Mason and his wife, Alice Eve’s nameless figure), and yet the movie is, at the outset, more entertaining (and promising) than one might’ve anticipated – with the watchable atmosphere perpetuated by Morel’s old-school approach and a typically entertaining (if decidedly over-the-top) turn from Cena. And although the movie’s first big action set-piece is surprisingly exciting, Freelance progresses into a sluggish and hopelessly uninvolving midsection that slowly-but-surely drains the viewer’s interest and attention. (It’s impossible, ultimately, to work up much enthusiasm for many of the picture’s tedious digressions, with curious lack of violence only exacerbating the increasingly arms-length feel.) The inclusion of a shootout-focused climax arrives far too late to make anything resembling a positive impact (ie one has long-since checked out of the proceedings), and it is, in the end, impossible to label Freelance as anything other than a distressingly underwhelming misfire.

** out of ****