Freelance (2023)

Freelance arrives as a study in restraint, though not the intentional kind. Pierre Morel directs John Cena through a jungle with competence and no conviction, and the resulting film is a conventional action comedy that seems mildly embarrassed by its own premise. The cast is stocked with Colombian and other Latino performers playing Paldonian roles, which reads as sensible regional casting for a story set in South America, nothing more declarative. Alison Brie's journalist holds her own and lands a few blows in the finale, but the film has no thesis about gender and does not want one.

The politics are similarly weightless. A fictional dictator defends his nation's oil and mineral rights against South African mercenaries, which gestures toward sovereignty and resource extraction without committing to any argument about either. The mercenaries want the oil, the hero wants out of his cubicle, and the screenplay declines to draw a larger conclusion from either fact. Cena's character despises his law firm, a detail that flickers toward a critique of corporate drudgery and then goes back to sleep. There is no environmental concern, no body-positivity thread, no neurodivergent character, no LGBTQ presence, and no historical claim to revise. The film is simply a chase.

The comedy remains, broad and mostly harmless. Venegas turns out to be beloved, the uprising was staged, and everyone learns a small lesson about family before the credits. The moral instruction here is faint and largely decorative. The film never stops to lecture, which is its one genuine virtue. It is a $40 million shrug, and it knows it.