Freelance Review

Audiences were quick to turn on John Cena and Dwayne Johnson. Their pivot from hurling themselves and each other around a wrestling ring into tiring action spectacles was expected. What was not expected though was the relative decline in quality, and how quickly it happened for the record-breaking WWE Champion. Cena is in the early years of this on-screen presence though Freelance does him no favours, the shaky camera opening and the lacklustre quality from this Pierre Morel feature are dreadful. This is not about freelance journalists or subterfuge, this is just the expectation made by the title and the work over the last couple of years, swigging coffee through endless days and listening to Bob Dylan records. No, nothing like that. Cena plays a lawyer turned soldier turned adrenalin junkie trying to avoid the white-collar life.  

Understandable distractions from what could become the real world are understandable. Nobody wants the everyday life of clean-cut newly built homes and XL bully dogs traipsing through the stairs. Those who do want this are off to Turkey to get their teeth whitened. Joining the army is on the other end of this break from the pace of the mundane, the service to a country as bad as self-service in grey carpets and white-walled Rightmove listings. Freelance hopes injecting gunfire and adrenalin into a boring life pictured well in the future for Mason Pettitis (Cena) is enough to convince its viewers. It is not and cannot be because the horrid narration which introduces it, the dullard action which follows throughout and the lack of sense in the dramatics in the face of an explosive call to arms is neither taxing nor exciting.  

Flatlining support from Alison Brie, Juan Pablo Raba and Christian Slater should be no surprise for a feature of this calibre, what is more surprising is the flashy location and slick waves of Colombia can be so dull. It is a credit to Cena and the company that Freelance is such an indistinguishable, tiresome viewing. Nothing within, from its military coup antics to its escapes from the past can bring out anything more than a half-baked piece of post-glory days action. This reflects many of the problems currently in the genre and it is worrying how permanent they appear to be. Disengaged digitalisation flows through this one all too frequently, in turn making the Cena and Brie chemistry frosty, their spots of danger in the face of great evil cannot be taken seriously and the twee style Morel aims for undoes any chance of this. But it is the common product of the genre now, and it is a growing dissatisfaction for many.  

Morel’s peak is and always will be, it seems, Taken. Nobody can be taken with this one, from the clunky first-person to the generally airheaded and flat performance Cena gives. Freelance is a dense adventure through the jungle, something Johnson already did years before, and Brendan Fraser before them. It is an inevitability of the washed action star hoping to kindle a hope of new horizons. Their vehicle is always the goal and to do anything close to enjoyable it means they must be shown swinging through danger, getting the girl and shaking down the villainous governments. Some things never change. But they need to.