Hilariously Generic Action Abounds in First Trailer for John Cena, Allison Brie’s Freelance

It’s comforting, on some level, to know that even as streaming services like Netflix are committing insane dollar figures to increasingly shoddy original films and programming, there are still filmmakers out there making unapologetic cinematic rubbish intended specifically for theatrical consumption. It implies a certain audience that is still willing to trundle down to the local theater to see the occasional, shameless bit of garbage, and who among us can resist that clarion call? How else might one even describe upcoming John Cena/Allison Brie feature Freelance, a film that seemingly screams “direct to streaming” from every one of its pores? Just look at the first trailer below, if you want to bathe in some of the most perfectly generic action cheese of the last decade.

Freelance feels like a perfect, lazy amalgam of films past and present, borrowing the gender dynamic and tropical setting of last year’s The Lost City while welding itself to the dumb throwback action machismo of the kinds of films Cena was making in the mid-2000s, like the original The Marine. Throw in the dangerous, peacock of a dictator cribbed from last year’s The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, and you’ve got an “odd thruple on the run” story, although the trailer strangely goes out of its way to make us aware that Cena’s character has a wife, and thus not to expect any genuine romance angle with Brie (who deserves far better than this). Or as the official synopsis puts it: