Movie Review: 'Free Fire'
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- If non-stop, indiscriminate gunplay is what you're after, Free Fire was fashioned for you.
If a wall-to-wall Mexican standoff is your idea of a peak movie experience, then have at Free Fire.
If an endless parade of bullet wounds sounds like satisfying cinematic stimulation, then Free Fire hits the target dead-on.
And if a movie character without a gun is like a day without sunshine, then Free Fire lands well within your wheelhouse.
But for those of us seeking a dynamic narrative, delineated characters, and an idea or two accompanying all that expended ammo, Free Fire shoots blanks.
Lots and lots of them.
If British director Ben Wheatley (Kill List, High-Rise, Sightseers), who co-wrote the script for this unapologetic shoot-'em-up with Amy Jump, intended this as a satirical critique of the contemporary gun culture, he has missed not only badly but hypocritically, given that his film showcases and even seems to celebrate the brandishing of guns and assault rifles.
And let's not blame director Quentin Tarantino, even if his Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994) seem, all these years later, to have "inspired" this Tarantinoesque exercise.
The plot, such as it is, finds a weapons deal taking place in a filthy, abandoned warehouse with Cillian Murphy's understated IRA operative as the buyer and overstated South African dealer Sharlto Copley as the seller.
Brokering the deal is Armie Hammer's dapper negotiator, while grounded mediator Brie Larson tries to bring a little common sense to the proceedings.
Filling out the roster of nervous, suspicious participants with concealed weapons and itchy trigger fingers are Michael Smiley, Enzo Cilenti, Sam Riley, Jack Reynor, Noah Taylor, and Babou Ceesay.
Not that it matters who anybody is because, before very long, each and every one of them is merely a prop looking to take the next shot at someone somewhere, never mind why.
They're all doomed, of course – we get it, we get it – but the movie never makes us care in the least about any of the characters or their predicament.
It's set in Boston in the 1970s for some reason, perhaps so that cell phones cannot help bail anybody out.
But as we watch these glorified chess pieces take up their positions and take a bullet or three, we notice that we're confused about just what's going on and who's doing what to whom. And we further note that we're not really motivated to become better informed.
All this while sitting through one of the longest sustained shootouts in movie history.
Check, please.
As to the ultimate and inevitable question of who will survive and who will not, we lose interest in this fruitless guessing game early on.
When we finally realize that it's the firearms themselves that have hijacked the movie with a pointless assault on our senses, even our own desire for survival, let alone that of the characters, has been severely compromised.
As to the question of why Martin Scorsese signed on as executive producer, it's as mystifying as an explanation of what the heck Oscar winner Brie Larson (Room) is doing in this cockamamie movie.
So we'll wound 1 star out of 4 for a one-dimensional, bullet-riddled actioner. Free Fire's stance on gun control is lots of guns and absolutely no control.
