The Big Picture

Freelance is a disappointing action-comedy with poorly executed action, unfunny jokes, and inconsistent pacing. The film suffers from a lackluster script that fails to utilize the talents of John Cena and Alison Brie. Despite its ambitions, Freelance tries to tackle complex political themes without fully exploring them, resulting in a messy and unfulfilling experience.

Freelance begins with disappointment. In a montage awkwardly told in first-person, John Cena’s Mason Pettits laments that he knows exactly what he’s been put on this world to do, and yet, he hasn’t been able to do it. After becoming a lawyer and hating it, Mason quit to become a special forces operative, where he soon went on a mission to assassinate President Juan Venegas (Juan Pablo Raba) of Paldonia that left him injured and with half of his team dead. Now, Mason is trapped in the “nightmarish” existence he feared: he’s a lawyer, living a suburban life with his wife (an almost nonexistent Alice Eve), and his loving daughter. It doesn’t take long into Freelance for us to realize that we begin to feel like Mason, as we know this absolutely isn’t the type of garbage John Cena should be doing.

Thankfully, Mason is soon saved from this hellscape of having a good job and a charming family when his former special forces buddy (Christian Slater) and his private military company hire him for a protection job. Mason has to escort journalist Claire Wellington (Alison Brie) into Paldonia for an interview with President Juan Venegas. Believing the president was behind the attack that led to his team’s destruction, Mason has to deal with his issues with Venegas, and protect Claire, all while the South American country of Paldonia undergoes a military coup. You know, just a standard setup for your run-of-the-mill action-comedy!

Freelance Release Date October 27, 2023 Director Pierre Morel Cast Alison Brie, John Cena, Alice Eve, Christian Slater Rating R Genres Action, Comedy

‘Freelance’ Is an Action-Comedy Without Solid Action or Comedy
Image via Relativity Media

From Pierre Morel, director of Taken, From Paris with Love, and the truly atrocious Peppermint, Freelance continues his trend of bland, unremarkable action films. Freelance looks cheaply made, and while this film puts Cena, Brie, and Raba in a chase for their lives across Paldonia, this always looks as though it was filmed on backlots and green screens. The action is never exciting, the jokes never land, and the pacing is all over the place. Freelance takes an absurd amount of time to get going, as it slogs through Cena’s Mason whining about where his life is at before we ever get lost in Paldonia. Morel never makes any attempt to turn this into the grand adventure that it seemingly wants to be.

But writer Jacob Lentz is also largely to blame for this disaster, with weird pacing, terrible humor, and an overly convoluted narrative that heads into some extremely questionable territory. Freelance fundamentally feels like an amalgamation of several different ideas, none of which amount to much at all. It begins with a surprisingly mean-spirited sense of humor, as Mason jokes about how his suburban life would probably lead him to have an affair, and rolling his eyes at having to drive his daughter to school. Once the journey through Paldonia begins, Freelance becomes even more muddled, as this sometimes tries to be a half-assed love triangle between three characters that only show romantic interest occasionally, or if there’s nothing else to do within the scene. Sometimes, Mason seems completely in control of the situation he’s thrown into, and other times, he’s like a little kid uncertain how to act. There’s not even any real stab at humor, except for President Venegas’ constant joking about Mason’s last name.

Yet most confounding is how excessively complex Lentz tries to make what should’ve been a relatively simple concept. Instead of getting into the action or the comedy, Freelance stops itself dead in its tracks to go over and over the laborious plotting of this story. There are several minutes of Slater’s character trying to convince Cena’s Mason that he should do this job—which as we’ve seen is his dream job. But worst of all is how labyrinthian Lentz tries to make the politics of the Paldonia, complete with mercenaries, dictators, and corporately funded coups. With all these ups and downs, overthrowing of governments and changes of power, dictators become friends, violence becomes justified, and Freelance ends up becoming a hail of gunfire that never feels earned, thematically fitting, or like any of this setup was essential for what seemed like a romp through the woods.

John Cena and Alison Brie Deserve Better Than ‘Freelance’
Image via Relativity Media

Unfortunately, this cast full of actors who can do better get lost in this mess. Cena does his best to bring a lighthearted approach to Mason, despite the weird dislike of settling down and his penchant for murdering, but the script and lack of any real jokes don’t help him in that regard. Meanwhile, Brie, who has often shown she can be charming and hilarious, is wasted here, frequently becoming either a damsel in distress or becoming the center of attention for her attractiveness. Freelance really shows it mishandled these actors during the end-credits bloopers, where we see both Cena and Brie playing and goofing around on set, bringing a sense of lightheartedness and actual fun to this film that is missing elsewhere.

But for all the odd directions of the script, it’s Raba’s President Venegas who ends up coming out on top in Freelance. While Lentz ventures to give Cena and Brie characters with some depth or layers, Raba’s Venegas actually makes this work—for the most part. Raba plays Venegas as though he could just be a misunderstood president or a dictator who could be losing his marbles. Raba’s character gets to be more playful than the rest of the cast, even though his country rests on his shoulders. While the character might not fully work, Raba’s jovial performance brings some much-needed levity to what is supposed to be a comedy.

From the focus on the ever-changing politics of this fictional country to the mostly forgetting about the action or comedy in this action-comedy, Freelance clearly tried to bite off more than it could chew. For all its clumsiness, Lentz’s screenplay is attempting to do more than one might expect from a film of this nature, but it’s that overextension of this film’s capabilities that makes all of its disparate angles fall apart. There’s nothing wrong with ambition in a film that might not seem like there’s much under the hood, but when it stretches everything too thin, it’s time to start killing your darlings. Freelance, like Cena’s Mason, wants to be something more, but maybe it should’ve settled for something a little more simplistic and straightforward and found the joy in that.

Rating: D

Freelance is now playing in theaters in the U.S. Click here for showtimes near you.