(Spain/UK/France 115 min.)
Dir. Pierre Morel, Writ. Don
MacPherson, Pete Travis, Sean Penn
Starring: Sean Penn, Idris Elba,
Ray Winstone, Mark Rylance, Jasmine Trinca, and Javier Bardem.
 |
Sean Penn as Jim Terrier. Directed by Pierre Morel.
Courtesy of Elevation Pictures. |
Sean Penn wades into Liam Neeson
territory in the ultraviolent new humanitarian revenge thriller and The Gunman. The humanitarian revenge
thriller is a strange genre. A do-gooder with a sniper and sweet biceps works
on wells as his day job and pumps lead into the machete-wielding and corporate
suits by night? That’s weird. A lack of genetic compatibility offers a least
one reason for which Craig Kielburger and Arnold Schwarzenegger will never have
a child.
Even stranger, speaking of Arnold, is the uptick in over-the-hill action stars hitting the screen with guns a-blazing now that they’ve either won their Oscars or stopped trying. This genre is where Liam Neeson is a Viking: he’s Hollywood’s undisputed badass of the AARP. Neeson sells(ish) the old, weary, broken-down action hero because he does it all with a self-conscious cocktail of defeat and resigned acceptance. The dignity of Neeson’s persona and the lack thereof in his current films (minus The Lego Movie) makes the old dog actioner a novelty, especially now that he has fully appropriated and embraced said novelty. It’s a shame that The Gunman isn’t a Liam Neeson movie. I half-seriously mean that sentiment.
The Gunman brings far too much sternness
as Neeson’s Taken director guides
Sean Penn in a rare action role as humanitarian/gun-for-hire Jim Terrier.
Terrier finds himself on the run and under fire when he pulls the trigger on a
government official in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He ditches his girl,
Annie (Jasmine Trinca), and gets outta Dodge (but then comes right back) and a
bunch of baddies soon come wielding machetes and wanting revenge. Naturally, he
blasts some holes in them.
Whatever happens in the first
hour(ish) of The Gunman is never
really clear as Penn looks at notes, flexes his biceps, scans flight manifests,
flexes his biceps some more (they are impressive!), and puts the puzzle
together whilst name-dropping a bunch of characters who have yet to appear or
have appeared with fleeting screen time. The
Gunman makes the headache extra meta by giving Terrier some unintelligible
neurological condition—something akin to a crippling brain fart that comes and
goes whenever shit gets real—to add an extra gimmick. (The ruse is a bit akin
to the drug that gives weathered action star Kevin Costner three days to live
in, well, 3 Days to Live.)
The Gunman frequently veers into the
realm of the unintentionally ridiculous as Terrier trots the globe and pukes
every now and then while reconnecting with Annie and the no-good NGO
something-or-other played by Javier Bardem. Bardem is hilariously and
delightfully awful with his over-the-top scene-chewing, and there are moments
in which The Gunman genuinely plays
well as campy, loony entertainment. Too many of the other actors, however
hardly, seem to be in on the joke—cough, cough, Mark Rylance as Cox—while one
burly, strapping bull (a real, actual bull with horns; not Sean Penn) ends the
film with a good solid laugh.
The Gunman just takes itself far too
seriously as Terrier defends himself and return fire in an all-out bloodbath
that never finds a moral centre to justify its grimness. Penn, like Neeson’s
first attempts at action, carries an air that clearly deserves better. Why does
the same man who does commendable humanitarian work in between performances of
searing depth and beauty (e.g. Mystic
River) even want to make a film that roars into exotic locales and blows
them to smithereens? The Gunman
offers a talking point about the corruption within some aid circles and the
interconnectedness of foreign governments and militia, but the muddled
screenplay doesn’t bring it out forcefully enough against the brutal and
relentless violence.
Penn admittedly fares very well
even if the material feels beneath him. He looks the part of an action hero and
his weariness makes Terrier a man who has seen far too much conflict for one
lifetime. Morel also brings the same slickness and edge that makes the Taken franchise so appealing to some viewers,
and The Gunman entertains enough,
just not on that level of a guilty pleasure that saves the Taken franchise from its similar mix of silliness and senseless
violence. Why don’t they all just make Red
3?
Rating: ★★ (out of ★★★★★)
The Gunman opens in theatres on March 20th.
