"This is not mission! This is honeymoon!"
"Hey, future Mike! It's me! Listen, I know the Bodyguard Review Board would not look favorably on this, but, uh... but I had to take a sabbatical from my sabbatical. Something's come up beyond my control. Anyway, I'm not bodyguarding. I'm just helping this guy out. Because the alternative is his even scarier wife sodomizing my dreams. That's really gonna get in the way of my transformation. Do I love what I'm doing right now? Absolutely not. But I think you'd be pretty proud of me for staying true to my journey. Talk to ya soon."
— Michael Bryce's voice message to himself.
Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard, released as The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard in Australasia, is an action-comedy and the sequel to The Hitman's Bodyguard. It was released on June 16, 2021.
Still stressed by the events of the first film, Michael Bryce (Ryan Reynolds) decides to take a holiday and not think about bodyguarding. His plans come to a screeching halt when Sonia Kincaid (Salma Hayek) and Darius Kincaid (Samuel L. Jackson) - who is the cause of his psychological problems - barrels into his life. On top of that, Interpol assigns the three with a mission to prevent terrorist Aristotle Papadopoulos (Antonio Banderas) from disrupting all-electric power in Europe. This leads our heroes into a series of mishaps, explosions, and a chance meeting with an old family member (Morgan Freeman) where Bryce will find out what kind of person he truly is.
Previews: Teaser
, Red Band Teaser, Trailer.
The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard contains examples of:
- Action Girl: Sonia proves to be just as brutal and chaotic in armed combat as Darius.
- Adult Adoptee: Played for Laughs in the end, when Sonia tricks Bryce into signing papers he believes are his bodyguarding liscence. Only belately does he realize he unwittingly signed adoption papers and is now legally Sonia and Kingcaid's son, despite already being an adult in his late 40s. Oh, and she never even discussed this with her husband beforehand, shocking both of them. It makes you wonder why Bryce didn't read the papers before he signed them, or even asked what they were.Bryce and Kincaid: Wait, WHAT THE FUCK?!
- Actor Allusion:
- When Bryce introduces his father, played by Morgan Freeman, he boasts about the rich timbre of his voice.
- At one point Bryce comments to Sonia that he is not a mercenary with super powers.
- In a flashback about Sonia and Aristotle's romantic past, he wears black and his black hair is not yet greying and it's worn in a ponytail, calling to mind the actors' prior roles as the Mariachi and Carolina.
- Bathos: Bryce's mother's death is ridiculous, and the idea of gelato being someone's Trauma Button is silly... but Bryce is obviously still struggling with his guilt, his reaction to the button being hit isn't over-the-top or comedic, and Sonia takes the situation seriously and shows him genuine empathy.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: Aristotle Papadopoulos is the terrorist leader trying to shut down Europe, while Michael Bryce Sr. is his head of security. The two are also confronted at the same time in the climax: Aristotle by Darius and Sonia and Senior by Bryce.
- Black Comedy: The flashback showing the death of Bryce's mother counts, given that it happened because an obese man just flew off a ride and knocked her into another one that led to her bloody demise.
- Blasting It Out of Their Hands: Sonia does this to Aristotle during the final battle when he and Darius are engaged in a Mexican Standoff.
- Boom, Headshot!: How Darius and Sonia kill Aristotle at the end of the final battle.
- Broken Pedestal: Bryce is devastated when he realises that his bodyguard stepfather is working for the villain (and on a lesser note, the man actually does wear kevlar).
- Bulletproof Vest: When Bryce faces his stepfather in a fight, he realises that the man is actually wearing kevlar despite his claim that he never bothers, Bryce Sr. pointing out that he's a ninety-year-old man.
- Call-Back: In the first film, Bryce removes the clip from Darius' gun and thumbs the bullets onto the floor one by one. In the sequel, Bryce Sr. does this to Bryce while taunting him, only to discover that Bryce had done the same to him.Bryce: Did you forget who trained me?
- Cerebus Retcon: Bryce's obsession with seat belts is revealed to be tied with the trauma of his mother's death, caused by an obese man crashing on her after being ejected from a rollercoaster because he did not fasten his seat belt.
- The Chew Toy: Bryce suffers a number of injuries, including taking a shotgun round to the chest (while wearing Kevlar), getting buried at sea (while alive), and getting hit by a car twice over the course of the film.
- Chekhov's Gun: Bryce's penknife, which he uses to stab Bryce Sr.'s throat with.
- Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: The first movie ends with Bryce possibly rekindling his relationship with Amelia, after Darius makes him realize he's still in love with her. In this movie, she's nowhere to be seen and doesn't even get a mention during his therapy session. There's a point when someone mentions Michael is single—which could imply that their reconciliation didn't last, but he never follows it up with any kind of confirmation though.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: Aristotle sends Bryce and Darius down to his palace's dungeon to be tortured. While Darius is defiant even while being tased, Bryce agrees to talk before the torturer lays a finger on him, (obviously remembering his time being tortured in the first film).
- Con Woman: Sonia Kincaid.
- Continuity Nod:
- A group of nuns gasp at Sonia's vulgar language, just like when Michael unintentionally swore in another nun groups' van.
- Bryce finishes off Magnusson by shoving him through a jukebox three times, with each moment causing a song to play. The last time has Ace of Base's "I Saw the Sign", which was the same song that Bryce sang to block out Darius' singing in the first movie. It turns out that this is one of Bryce's favorite tunes!
- Dark and Troubled Past: Bryce's mother died when he was younger when a fat man fell off a fairground ride and threw her into another ride, Bryce blaming himself as he was the reason she was standing in the right place to get hit.
- Decoy Getaway: Basically applies; Darius and Bryce basically set up a couple of Interpol agents to get killed by the first wave of Aristotle Papadopoulos's security because they look a bit like the two men at a distance.
- Designated Girl Fight: In the end, Sonia throws down with the villain's female lieutenant.
- Destroy the Product Placement: In the nightclub, Bryce is tossed into a display of Aviation Gin, wrecking it completely.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Sonia mauled some guys because one of them grabbed her butt. They in turn proceed to retaliate to this by chasing her across the town with lots of guns.
- Does Not Like Guns: For most of the film, Bryce refuses to use guns (preferring pepper spray) because he insists he's on sabbatical and taking up a firearm represents a regression from all the progress he'd made in therapy.
- Easy Amnesia: After Bryce, Sonia and Darius are caught by Aristotle, Sonia starts to remember a whole past with Aristotle. The reason why she lost her memory of him was due to her right Gucci heel snapping while the two were on a boat, sending her plummeting to the ocean and rendering her comatose for weeks. However, it's later subverted, when it turns out that she faked the amnesia, and actually swam away to safety.
- Explosive Leash: Sonia gets strapped to an explosive bracelet to keep her close to the briefcase full of money they have to deliver. She can only have the bracelet removed after the delivery.
- Evil Counterpart:
- Following his Face–Heel Turn, Bryce’s stepfather is this to Bryce as the two were once respected bodyguards.
- Aristotle also employs a renowned bodyguard (Magnusson), that Bryce admires, a hitman (Zento) to whom Darius claims to have lost a lot of contracts, and an Ax-Crazy woman. No bonus point to guess with which of them each main character gets a one-on-one fight with in the climax.
- Bryce Sr. also acts as this compared to Darius, given the type of relationship Darius has with Michael and how he—albeit unwillingly—ends up adopting Michael after the climax.
- Evil Mentor: Even before Senior reveals his role in Aristotle's plot and disowns Michael, he still clearly taught Michael a lot of what he knows about being a bodyguard.
- Face–Heel Turn: Bryce’s stepfather goes from respected bodyguard to Aristotle’s head of security, selling out Bryce.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: The ending of the movie has Sonia secretly asking O'Neill for something. When he asks if she's serious about this, which she confirms, he hands her a form and says that her group are "sicker fucks than [he] thought". Bryce believes the form is a way to get back his Triple-A bodyguarding license, and signs it. But the thing is, why would a bodyguard form sicken O'Neill? Because those forms are actually adoption papers for Sonia and Darius to leagally adopt someone... namely, Bryce! (Did we mention Darius apparently didn't know this either?)
- Foreshadowing:
- Bryce Sr. serves gelato with supper, even though it's Bryce's Trauma Button, and glumly admits he forgot when Bryce excuses himself. Except, wait, how could a Good Stepfather like him forget something like that? Well, he's later revealed to be evil and he considers Bryce an embarrassment, so it's not that he forgot, it's that he didn't care.
- Bryce Sr. also ticks off Bryce when he belittles his gunshot wound and makes fun of his Kevlar vest and penknife, which even annoys Sonia. Of course, he was just barely hiding his contempt for him.
- If you notice, Sonia is never actually happy when Aristotle gets close to her. She's not in love with him.
- Funny Background Event: While on sabbatical, Bryce starts off lounging in a deck chair, reading a book, and listening to music while completely oblivious to a raging gunfight happening behind him... until Sonia rips off his earphones and orders him to help her.
- Good Stepfather: Bryce's stepfather has always been good to him, until he betrays him and calls him a disgrace.
- Groin Attack: Darius is revealed to be sterile because Bryce hit him in the testicles with a ricocheting shot during a previous confrontation.
- Happy Ending Override: The first film with the aftermath of Dukhovich's demise ended with Michael and Darius being on far better terms and with Michael on the verge of both reconciling with Amelia and getting back his bodyguard license. By the beginning of this film, Michael failed to become licensed again, has nightmares about Darius while fully being back to blaming him—with Darius not being happy to see him again later on either—and Michael's relationship status with Amelia is hardly ever brought up if at all.
- Headphones Equal Isolation: When Bryce goes to Capri (like the pants), he starts off by putting on some headphones and reads The Secret and is completely unaware of the chaos unfolding behind him before Sonia pulls the headphones off him.
- Honor Before Reason: It appears the reason why Bryce Sr. (and likely Magnusson) is helping is not out of greed or xenophobia, but because he hired him for a job and he'll blindly protect a sociopathic terrorist.
- I'm Standing Right Here: Kincaid is annoyed that his wife brought Michael Bryce to his rescue and even calls him "the most annoying motherfucker on Earth". Bryce, meanwhile, is standing a few feet in front of him.Bryce: Excuse me? I have 20/20 hearing.
- Intoxication Ensues: Sonya gives Bryce some pills to help his broken ribs. The pills turn out to be lithium, causing Bryce to fall asleep in the back of a van during a lengthy car chase.
- Kick the Dog: Bryce Sr. serving gelato comes off as this in hindsight, since he knew perfectly well it was a Trauma Button for his stepson. Given what we find out later, his excuse of having "forgotten" is almost certainly bullshit.
- Knight of Cerebus: Much like Dukhovich from the first film, there isn't anything funny about Aristotle, and his introductory scene of him suffocating an EU diplomat and him shutting down an entire city are treated fully seriously.
- Knight Templar: Senior's only genuine motivation for helping Aristotle with his scheme to blow up the EU is it's his job to do so.
- Made of Iron: Bryce suffers an incredible lot of punishment during the movie (getting hit by a car twice, crashing through a windshield, getting hit by a boat, and the list goes on), but never seems to suffer any long lasting consequences.
- Mistaken for Cheating: Darius borrows Bryce's phone and Sonia grabs it away from him and finds out he was talking about something involving "Carmen", it turns out he was calling to get tickets for the opera Carmen.
- Outrun the Fireball: After killing both Bryce Sr. and Aristotle and Bryce disabling the drill, Bryce, Darius, and Sonia do this when the yacht explodes.
- Pet the Dog:
- Bobby O'Neill is generally an absolute Jerkass, but when his boss questions if Aislo knew of him hiring Bryce and the Kincaids, he flatly denies it.
- Senior offers Michael the chance to get his bodyguarding license back immediately if he walks away from the fight. Later, when Michael stabs him in the neck, he is genuinely impressed and even informs him of the bomb's countdown.
- Punch-Clock Villain: Bryce Sr. is so devoted to his job as a bodyguard that that's apparently his primary/only reason given for helping and working for Aristotle in the first place. Proves fully devoted to the role that he even takes a bullet for Aristotle, even while wearing a vest.
- Punk in the Trunk: Bryce is at the receiving end of this from Darius and Sonia, who keep him there while they spend time together in Italy. They only release him after having sex.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Bryce is the measured Blue to Sonia and Darius' fiery red.
- Sadist Show: The humour in the movie comes from two main sources: Sonia being
Crazy Is Cool (with an emphasis on crazy) and Bryce enduring all kinds of physical and psychological abuse (half of them because of Sonia's antics). He starts the film with a Happy Ending Override from the previous film, receives zero respect from anyone (including his father), gets run over by cars and boats, drugged, stuffed in the trunk of a car, mistaken for dead, and that only covers half of the movie. The film ends with him jumping out of a small boat where he had been stuck for a month in the company of the Kincaids, now his adoptive parents, who spend their time having loud sex. And, unlike the first film, he gets very few occasions to show his competence. - Screw This, I'm Outta Here: At the end of the film, Bryce chooses to jump into the ocean from a yacht, after witnessing Sonia and Darius have sex.
- Shout-Out:
- O’Neill mocks Aislo by calling her William Wallace and Sean Connery.
- After Sonia claims to be Aristotle's lost love and Bryce's stepfather turns out to be working for Aristotle Bryce and Darius end up in a bar together causing the latter to quote from Casablanca.
- Bryce comments that he would not trust Sonia to take care of a Chucky doll.
- Slashed Throat: At the end of the final battle, Bryce kills his stepfather by secretly stabbing him in the throat with his pocket knife.
- Spicy Latina: Sonia is Hot-Blooded and ready to leap into a fight.
- Strange Minds Think Alike: When Bryce raises questions about Sonia's Easy Amnesia regarding her past fling with Aristotle, he compares this to the premise of Overboard (1987). Later on, Aristotle uses that exact analogy when he uncovers Sonia's ruse.
- The Stinger: The trio are now stuck on a boat given by O'Neill for a month or two, due to them still being on red notice. Therefore, after Bryce sees Darius and Sonia having sex, he calmly jumps off the yacht.
- Trauma Button: Bryce has this once Bryce Sr. serves him, Darius, and Sonia gelato for dessert, leading Bryce Sr. to explain Bryce’s Dark and Troubled Past above.
- Trauma Conga Line: Bryce goes through an awful lot across the movie. First his sabbatical is interrupted and he is dragged by Sonia into danger without getting any thanks from Darius, then he learns that his father never loved him, and in the end when he thinks he finally got his license back it turns out he has been adopted by the Kincaids. Add this to the incredible amount of injuries he suffers from during the movie.
- Unflinching Walk: After Bryce finds out that his stepfather turned his back on him and gets physically and verbally abused by him, he blows up his stepfather's Jaguar before walking away.
- The Unintelligible: O'Neill struggles to understand Aislo's heavy Scottish accent, and the film even subtitles her lines at one point to help the audience.
- Villain Respect: Bryce Sr. having been stabbed with the penknife by Michael tells him "Not bad" and then as he's dying points out that shutting down the drill and blowing up the yacht is the only way to stop the shutdown of the EU.
- Wham Line: Played for Laughs. After Bryce signs some papers for Darius and Sonia, Sonia is suddenly beaming and smiling. That's because Bryce had unknowingly signed Darius and Sonia's adoption papers, making him their son now.Sonia: (to Bryce) You're now our son!
- Worldbuilding: This film confirms that AAA-rated executive protection agents are a real thing and not just Bryce being pretentious. There's an entire community of them and a board that strictly maintains standards and licenses.
- You're Not My Father: Michael eventually disowned his stepfather and says this to him in the climax.Michael: You're not my father, just some guy my mom used to bang!
"The hit man, the bodyguard and the con woman. You assholes look like shit."
