Peacemaker: Some Thoughts.

In my stars I am above thee, but be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em. Thy Fates open their hands. Let thy blood and spirit embrace them.

- Malvolio, Twelfth Night, 2:5:7

Chris Smith, alias Peacemaker (John Cena), has greatness thrust upon him, but the question is:  Can he bear the weight of greatness?

Now this may sound like a negative introduction to the HBOMax series Peacemaker, but I assure you it is a compliment to the series and the character around whom it is centered.

You see, Peacemaker entertains the delusion that he is an All-American superhero, cut from the same cloth as Superman or Marvel’s Captain America.  Instead, this muscle bound, gun toting, government agent hides a vulnerable center of a whiny man child with a severe inferiority complex and the disdain of his extreme right-wing dad Auggie (Robert Patrick), who makes no reservations for calling his son a “pussy.”

To begin with the series, Peacemaker is recruited by Amanda Waller’s lieutenant Clemson Murn (Chukwudi Iwuji) to engage in Operation Butterfly.  Peacemaker is given no further details beyond targeted individuals in a dossier handed to him by Murn.  No sooner does Peacemaker demonstrate his ineptitude than when he leaves the dossier on the bed of a woman he had as a one night stand.  The next thing he knows, the wham bam thank you ma’am, pounces on him and nearly thrashes him to death in her apartment with her enhanced strength.  Only a last minute utilization of Peacemaker’s helmet - a sonic blast - succeeds in splattering this assassin across a parking lot.

Peacemaker botches and blunders his way through a narrow escape from two FBI agents.   He is simultaneously prepped for his next assignment and castigated by Murn for his incompetence.  Weeping like a child in the safety of his trailer park home, he is comforted by his “friend” Vigilante (Freddie Stroma), who is himself a low tier wanna be Batman who has no reservations of breaking the Caped Crusader’s “no killing” moral code.

The other compatriots of Peacemaker and his investigation of the Operation Butterfly mystery are the lethal blonde bombshell Emilia Harcourt (Jennifer Holland), hacker John Economos (Steve Agee), and the eager gofer Leota Adebayo (Danielle Brooks), who finds the title character to be both offensive and endearing in his simple mindedness.

Cena has expert comic timing as the outwardly macho, inwardly insecure Peacemaker.  In his first appearance in the film The Suicide Squad, he boasted “I cherish peace with all of my heart.  I don’t care how many men, women, and children I kill to get it.”  Yet when he is put to the test as a sniper to kill a senator and his family - all suspected “butterflies” - he can’t bring himself to do it.  

Peacemaker is the heart of the satire:  Is this ‘roided up windbag competent enough or cold hearted enough to execute all the dirty jobs he has been assigned to perform?  Series writer and director James Gunn is determined to put his hero through the wringer.  What kind of man Peacemaker turns out to be remains to be seen.

- JJB

New episodes of Peacemaker premiere every Thursday on HBO Max.