FREELANCE - Mark Reviews Movies

Freelance, Relativity Media

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 27, 2023

Some movies are such miserable experiences that pointing it out feels like enough. Freelance is somehow one of them, despite the fact that it possesses two stars who have proven their ability to be charming and funny before, a supporting turn from an actor who probably thinks this could be a breakthrough role and gives it his all, and a screenplay made of pure and previously tested formula. One would think something—anything—here might work, even if it's only by accident.

The only thing keeping this from being a complete failure is that it doesn't fall into some immoral territory on some level. Surprisingly, the movie comes close to that, though.

Screenwriter Jacob Lentz gives us a narrative composed of wholly familiar elements. We have Mason Pettits (John Cena), whose back story plays out in a series of POV shots of him almost becoming a lawyer, deciding to drop out of law school in his final year, joining the Army, and becoming a member of the military branch's Special Forces.

After a failed assassination attempt of the dictator of a fictional South American country, Mason is wounded, leaves the service, becomes an attorney, and resigns himself to an ordinary life with his wife (played by Alice Eve) and young daughter. Isn't it just the worst?

Apparently, it is, because Mason is bored, in despair, and having marital problems. The last part, at least, is understandable, if only because his wife seems to have some kind of psychological syndrome that forces her to speak and behave in such a way that allows the plot to happen. In one of her few scenes in the movie, she goes through three entirely different mindsets on her husband, his career, his basic safety, and their relationship over the course of exactly three lines of dialogue.

Hey, it's exactly what Mason needs to hear to abandon his job and take a private security gig offered by his former Army comrade (played by Christian Slater), and that's all that matters, apparently, when it comes to characterization. Who cares who these people are, as long as they go along with the gimmick, right?

Mason's new job is to protect Claire Wellington (Alison Brie), a disgraced journalist who wants to regain some respect by interviewing a South American dictator. Is this the very same autocrat whom Mason had been assigned to kill on his final mission? Are you really asking that question at this point?

Yes, he's Juan Venegas, played with a lot of useless gusto by Juan Pablo Raba. That's nothing against the actor. Raba is having a lot of fun here (The movie also feels a tad unsettling in making a self-proclaimed "monster" of a dictator into a lovable goof), which is more than can be said of his co-stars. Cena looks visibly lost, playing a character who's dumb enough not to make the most obvious connections about his new gig but intelligent enough to toss a random Hannah Arendt reference under his breath.

The usually solid Brie has the misfortune of being little more than a plot device. Her Claire is here to get the story rolling, to be put in constant danger, to seduce Mason in a scene with such a lack of chemistry that it feels wrong to call it formulaic, and to end up abducted by the bad guys.

The actual plot is a lengthy chase, as some outside business interests attempt a coup against Juan. It's punctuated by several action scenes that are staged by director Pierre Morel with such disinterest that said punctuation is either an ellipsis or a question mark. At one point, Mason falls down the same staircase three times in the middle of a gunfight/brawl with the main villain, and similar repetition happens a few times before that, too. The first action sequence has Mason driving a car forwards and backwards a couple of times on a narrow bridge, and another features Mason and Claire running through the jungle, a river, and a field as a helicopter repeatedly misses them with missiles and strafes everything around them with machine gun fire.

Is it any wonder that Cena and Brie appear as bored as they must have been doing the same stunts, making the same jokes, and being expected to carry material like this? To call Freelance a rip-off of many better movies with a similar character dynamic, plot, and tropical locale would be an insult to the rip-offs that aren't nearly as charmless and incompetent as this dreck.

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