Pierre Morel’s Freelance follows disgraced American journalist Claire Wellington (Alison Brie) and her ex-military bodyguard, Mason Pettits (John Cena), as he escorts her to the fictional South American country of Paldonia for an exclusive interview with its dictator, Juan Venegas (Juan Pablo Raba). While the film starts out by presenting Paldonia and its leader as unrepentantly evil—among other things, we’re told that Venegas is responsible for the deaths of half of Pettits’s former squad years earlier—it eventually reveals that various imperialist forces and corporate-funded mercenary groups have been actively undermining Venegas as a means of forcing him to sell valuable natural resources for a cheaper rate.
That’s a surprising turn of events, especially for an action-comedy, given Hollywood’s typically simplistic representations of under-developed countries whose conditions are presented as justification for American intervention. Regrettably, that’s the only surprise to be found in Jacob Lentz’s screenplay, whose stabs at humor are so poorly conceived that they rarely qualify as such, and even when they do, they’re more likely to elicit groans, such as a recurring and painfully ironic crack about Pettits being…petite. What’s worse, though, is the haphazard manner with which the filmmakers constantly juxtapose these lighter moments with more dire scenarios, with the former frequently undercutting the latter’s intended gravitas.
The film’s romance plot, such as it is, is no less egregious, and in no small part due to the void of chemistry between the three leads. The few times that Venegas hits on Claire are meant to show him as both charming and non-threatening when he’s actually just objectifying her. Meanwhile, the inevitable flirtations between Claire and Pettits not only come out of nowhere, but are swiftly cut short when Pettits realizes that he’s still in love with his estranged wife (Alice Eve).
Such awkward, ultimately pointless scenes are par for the course in Freelance, a film that doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be. By its conclusion, what we’re left with is a cinematic Frankenstein, whose disparate genre elements have been cobbled together without much consideration or fuss. As such, the film ultimately feels as aimless as it does airless—too blasé for its more serious messaging to land and not nearly funny enough to make you forget it.
Since 2001, we've brought you uncompromising, candid takes on the world of film, music, television, video games, theater, and more. Independently owned and operated publications like Slant have been hit hard in recent years, but we’re committed to keeping our content free and accessible—meaning no paywalls or fees.
If you like what we do, please consider subscribing to our Patreon or making a donation.
