Freelance (2023)

1 Star (out of 4)

Dense of Purpose

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

An insulting abomination of a movie that wastes the talents of all involved, this lifeless, generic, confusing, unfunny mess is so glaringly out of touch with reality that it makes the head hurt.

Former Army Special Forces Mason Pettits (John Cena) finds himself unfulfilled, working as a lawyer and with a wife (Alice Eve) and daughter in the suburbs. An old pal (Christian Slater) comes calling with a job offer, working as security for a journalist, Claire Wellington (Alison Brie).

She has been granted an exclusive interview with Juan Venegas (Juan Pablo Raba), the controversial President of Paldonia. Not long after arriving, there's an attempt at a coup, and Mason finds himself on the run not only with Claire, but with Venegas. He quickly discovers that, in politics, as in life, things are not always as they seem.

First off, the casting in Freelance seems all wrong. Cena plays the uptight one and Brie plays the carefree one, when those roles should have been reversed; that's where the actors' strengths lie. (See Cena in Fast X and Brie in GLOW.) As it is, Brie as well as Alice Eve, have so little to do that it's almost misogynist. Is there anything less cinematic than Brie's character live-streaming the coup by standing on the sidelines and holding up a phone?

Worse, the movie doesn't even seem to know what it's actually about. We don't even get a romance between its two leads; even that tension is taken from us. Its politics are bonkers, and, by the end, we're still not sure whether Venegas is a lying dictator or a benevolent leader. Moreover, the Mason character spends the movie looking for his "purpose" and announces that he's found it only after discovering a large deposit in his bank account. (His purpose is money?)

Freelance is one of those movies in which the most pressing question is: how was this ever made?