John Cena’s Freelance is a movie about self-employed people, probably.

The action movie director Pierre Morel has extensive experienced his finger on the pulse of modern-day culture, commencing with his breakout function Taken—a searing and relatable portrait of a middle-aged dad’s helplessness in the facial area of a altering society, with Liam Neeson as a hapless ex–CIA agent who does not want his daughter to go on a amazing vacation to Paris. “I have a particular established of parenting expertise,” he says unfortunately to the enjoyable Albanian entrepreneur who’s taken his daughter out for a night time on the town, and sure enough, individuals expertise lead to him to spoil everyone’s pleasurable European vacation.

Morel’s newest film, starring John Cena and Alison Brie, will come to theaters Friday, and when I’ve viewed just the trailer, it’s distinct that at the time all over again Morel is addressing a important present-day issue. This time, it is the gig financial state and career insecurity. The movie is referred to as Freelance, and I am delighted that Hollywood is ultimately having severely the plight of the underpaid, overworked freelancer.

Cena performs former distinctive forces operative Mason Pettits, who’s hired by Christian Slater to guard a journalist (Brie) as she interviews the president of the fictional South American country of Paldonia, portrayed in the trailer as a comedic hellscape of poverty and corruption. (It is Ok! It’s fictional!) The trailer is weighty on the equipment guns and explosions and shirtless John Cena and stuff, which of course I understand—you gotta get the butts in seats right before you can teach them about the severe realities of self-work. But I’m rather fired up to see John Cena experience almost everything that your standard freelancer activities, like, presumably:

• A 15-minute scene in which John Cena has to build an account on Christian Slater’s new payment portal, but the portal won’t recognize his identification mainly because he’s not a registered vendor, but he cannot develop into a registered vendor until eventually he creates an account on the portal.

• John Cena describes to his estranged wife that no, this unique gig doesn’t offer overall health insurance policy, but Christian Slater has told him he’s really guaranteed they’re including head count following year or, worst situation, the year just after.

• John Cena uploads his invoice to the system, but the process rejects it since it will have to include things like an “invoice number,” so he sorts Invoice Variety: 000000001 on the Word doc and resubmits.

• John Cena attempts to remember which just one is the routing range and which 1 is the account amount.

• Alison Brie asks John Cena if he has a corporation credit card to pay out for a rescue helicopter out of Paldonia, and he has to admit that they do not give those people to freelancers.

• Christian Slater is extremely responsive for the initially several days but then fully stops answering emails till three weeks later on, when he writes, “Sorry, bud! Been skiing—you know how holidays are 😎”

• John Cena fills out a W-9.

• John Cena’s mother asks him how operate is heading, and he tells her about this gig, and she is silent for 11 seconds and then tells him she thinks it’s unacceptable to ship an personnel to a perilous international nation in which the canines just pee on partitions and the young children are impolite to you, and he should just connect with the business on the phone and clarify that to them, and he suggests, “I’m not an staff, Mom. I’m a freelancer.”

• John Cena sends an email looking at, “Just a quick nudge re: payment—thanks!”

• At the stop, soon after John Cena saves Alison Brie and at last will get compensated, he gets an offer to educate a class at Particular Forces Faculty, environment up the motion-packed sequel, Adjunct.

It’s feasible, of program, that this film is just a senseless motion comedy that they couldn’t arrive up with a authentic title for, so they just referred to as it Freelance for no specific motive. I would not anticipate that kind of issue from a social-realist filmmaker like Pierre Morel, but I guess we all have to struggle below the yoke of financial gain, even the director—who is, in a way, if you imagine about it, a freelancer also. But even if it turns out that Freelance has almost nothing to do with freelancing, I’m glad that at the really least, in the scene with shirtless John Cena, Freelance features a fully correct portrait of every freelancer’s ab muscles.