Free Fire (2017)

A sub mediocre movie directed by someone who probably thinks "Manchester by the sea" is an action packed experience and also did not spend more than a couple of hours in thinking the plot through. The wanna be racially/gender inclusive cast turns quickly into the predictable stereotyping one would expect. And the painfully unidimensional characters are as hard to watch as their poorly played accents are to stomach.

It is the 1970s, and a small group of Irish republicans is in the USA arranging to buy automatic rifles from a South African supplier via a broker of illicit arms deals. No-one trusts anyone. As if that wasn't enough of a problem, it turns out that one of the Irishmen has an unhelpful drug habit. This fellow also fell foul of one of the American crew the previous evening. Oh, and there are a couple of snipers in the warehouse where the deal is taking place....Director and co-writer Ben Wheatley is flavour of the month in some quarters, despite having directed only a handful of cinema movies. Well, I saw A Field In England and High Rise, and I thought both were pretentious rubbish.But I'll cut him a break, because Free Fire definitely has something going for it. It's a really simple concept - an arms deal goes wrong, gunfire erupts, and there is an extended jockeying for position in a closed-in location (a derelict warehouse), with gunfire, over the next hour or so. What makes this film something to register on the radar is the way that hour is managed, and the dialogue within it. The set-up has established every character, so we understand personalities and motivations before all Hell breaks loose. I won't say that we care, because these are not nice people, but we are invested enough to want to see what happens to each of them, and who (if anyone) manages to escape alive.There is a good cast, headed by Brie Larson, Armie Hammer, Cillian Murphy and Sharlto Copley, all of whom give us nuanced characters. Copley, as is his tendency, goes wildly over the top but, then, that's how his character is written.And, importantly, notwithstanding the tension and death and destruction, there is a strong strand of dark humour running through this. I'm not saying you'll laugh out loud but, if you're anything like me, the script will please you.

He of Sightseers and Kill List delivers on every level

I must say that I'm a bit let down by this one. It is by no means a bad movie and in the end is fine, but going off of the very funny and fast paced trailers for "Free Fire" I was expecting a film that was going to be much more than simply "fine". To be fair, this could be a case where expectations tanked my perspective and slightly ruined my experience with this movie, but I still believe that this could have been something really spectacular.The plot, if you are not aware, is that two small groups of criminals get together to make a gun deal in an abandoned warehouse when it turns out one member from each side have a banter that resorts to a deadly shootout for all parties. From the start of the hysteria there is a lot of gun fire winding up in some humorous injuries and even deaths as they all seem to go down one by one.Although I can't say that I was ever irritated or even all that bored during the run time, I just was hoping for somewhat of a rapid fire pace with some humorous and witty dialog. This movie is a lot slower than I originally anticipated with the majority of the dialog resorting to the characters simply yelling "F*ck you" to one another in the middle of shooting, which grows relatively old after a while. Even though the film doesn't do anything inherently wrong at all, the material never rises above just being "okay". And that's fine for a movie to be...well...fine. But when I see a trailer that promises a hilarious comedy with high-octane action for 90 minutes only to deliver on a somewhat humorous and mildly entertaining quarrels with repetitive action, I can't help but feel let down; especially with the ending going with a disappointing resolve."Free Fire" for all its faults is alright. It did the job it was meant to by giving me some entertainment for an hour and a half, but ceases to go beyond that in any way. I will say it probably won't anger anyone who watches it, but it also won't be something that'll stick with viewers much either. All the actors do a fine job; the standouts for me being Armie Hammer, Sharlto Copely and Cillian Murphy doing what they can in order to give colorful enough characters to follow. Everyone else does well enough, but the material doesn't give anyone much to really work with. The story has a promising concept that's reminiscent of older works by Quentin Tarrantino or Guy Ritchie, but never fully lives up to that potential. The editing and camera work was fine, although it had trouble correlating where all the characters were in relation to each other through much of the movie; after a while I just gave up and accepted that they were shooting at each other even if they looked like they were shooting in the wrong direction. If you're looking for a movie to pass the time this certainly will do the job adequately enough.