Dir: Patrick Hughes

With: Ryan Reynolds, Samuel L Jackson, Salma Hayek

Runtime: 118 minutes

Two stars

PULP Fiction spiel-meister Samuel L Jackson. Deadpool’s drop dead likeable Ryan Reynolds. Together, for the first time, in a buddy movie. A haud me back offer, right? Well, hold that thought for a second. Or as many a character in this charmless affair is likely to say, hold that ******* thought, ************.

Set in cities across Europe, The Hitman’s Bodyguard is an international action comedy thriller, with its language of common currency being “Stoopid”. From Coventry to London to Amsterdam and The Hague, the considerable talents of Jackson and Reynolds are squandered in a noisy shoot-em-up that even for the summer silly season is a waste of space.

Reynolds plays Michael Bryce, bodyguard to the rich and famous who believes in doing things by the book and avoiding surprises. “Boring is best” is his mantra. Alas, a job transporting an international arms dealer to the airport turns out to be anything but routine, and two years on Bryce is urinating in a bottle in his car, waiting to pick up a disgraced banker. How the suave have fallen.

Meanwhile, over at Interpol, Darius Kincaid (Jackson) is cutting a deal. He will give evidence against notorious dictator Vladislav Dukhovich (Gary Oldman) in return for his jailed wife (Salma Hayek) going free. All Interpol has to do is get Kincaid safely to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, no mean feat when Dukhovich’s killers are trying to silence him.

With Interpol not to be trusted (don’t ask), agent Amelia Roussel (Elodie Yung), an old flame of Bryce’s, asks him to escort Kincaid. So begins a hugely implausible adventure in which the two battle their way across Europe, all the while getting on each other’s nerves in what is meant to be an endearing fashion in but is just as flat and misjudged as everything else in the movie.

How to chuckle along with a picture that thinks lines such as “You’re about as useful as a condom in a convent” is comedy gold? How to prevent a yawn as Hayek’s character tries and fails to shock with her spectacularly tedious cursing? How to endure Gary Oldman, hammier than a triple bacon sandwich, chewing whatever scenery he can get his gums around as a tyrant who does his own executions?

Then there are the endless scenes in which Reynolds and Jackson, pursued by swarms of others, race cars on curiously empty city roads and spray bullets in crowded areas. One hardly expects verite in summer popcorn movies, but this stuff makes comic book superhero capers look like documentaries. In a sign of the picture’s lazy reliance on Jackson and Reynolds, just by being themselves, saving the day, a placard toted by anti-Dukhovich protester’s placard reads: “Belarus. Human rights.” That’s about as far as the imagination stretches.

Director Patrick Hughes (The Expendables 3, Red Hill) and writer Tom O’Connor (Fire with Fire) presumably hoped for a red hot hit that would sit alongside the likes of 48 Hours, Lethal Weapon, and The Nice Guys. Instead they’ve ended up with a steaming mess.

Moving quickly on to our Now for Something Completely Different department, Final Portrait (four stars) is another close study of a relationship, this one between the art critic James Lord (played by Armie Hammer) and Alberto Giacometti (Geoffrey Rush). Written and directed by Stanley Tucci (the very same), it is the true tale of Lord sitting for the Swiss painter and sculptor in Paris in the 1960s. What Lord thought would take just days turns out to consume far more of his time, but in the process of perching on a chair he gains far more insight into the creative process than he could ever have imagined. He also bags a front row seat to the artist’s chaotic personal life.

A hit at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, Final Portrait, based on Lord’s acclaimed memoir, is a slow-burn charmer, with Hammer and Rush sparking beautifully off each other as the refined American abroad and the mercurial artist plagued by doubt about his abilities. No guns, no car chases, just class acts at work. Don’t even try to haud us back.