Freelance (2023) - Nearly... something

There's always an argument between those who lived through the eighties and nineties as to which decade spawned the best 'action' movies.  There were definitely cases for either period, as there were musclemen, huge explosions, islands full of expendable bad guys and crazy locations for terrorists to try and take over form and make their demands.  The the millennium came and the action genre seemed to try more for 'serious' and 'realistic' and those over-the-top blast-a-thons looked like they'd had their day.

'Freelance' definitely feels like it should be more at home in either the eighties or the nineties, but whether it's any good I can't really say.

John Cena certainly has the classic 'action hero' physique and plays the leading role as well as any wrestler who has turned to acting, as he's stranded on one of those nondescript South American countries that always need a dictator or two overthrown and he has to protect the real president and a reporter.

Now, if you're expecting wall to wall action and explosions, you may feel a little disappointed, as the action seems a little subdued for a film that looks like it firmly belongs in the 'action' genre.  There are a couple of nice gunfights, but nothing that really stands out or will make you go 'Wow!' and let it stick with you.

The secondary characters are pretty nondescript.  The bad guy is, er, bad.  And the woman Cena is trying to protect is, er, a damsel in distress.  It hits all the major beats of an old school action movie without actually trying to add anything new to the genre.  If it had have been released back in the eighties, I really do think it would have first become lost among the Stallone and Schwarzenegger output, before being cursed to the bottom of a 'straight to video' barrel and forgotten about.  I can't really think of anything overly negative to say, but then I can't really think of anything that I'm going to really remember about it.  I hear John Cena has plenty of fans out there, so I guess this film will always have a dedicated audience to enjoy it - and enjoyable it is, whether you watch it properly, or just have it on in the background, you'll roughly get the same experience.

6/10 Should probably keep you awake if Freddy Krueger was haunting your nights