Free Fire

There's a lot of respect to give when someone decides to set the entirety of a story within one location. Some would argue that it prevents the world it's set in from establishing itself as big along with not much personality. A lot of that is made up with making the characters interesting with charisma and dialogue. Good examples of this have included My Dinner with Andre, which is all just one dinner, The Breakfast Club, which was set in a high school, and some Quentin Tarantino films like Reservoir Dogs and The Hateful Eight. What about the action genre? Oddly, I mostly associate most action in one-location stories to the horror genre. While we do have action movies like Die Hard and Dredd which were technically set in one location, they had a large scope didn't truly feel confined. Hateful Eight seemed more terrifying when there was only one room within the cabin where hiding wasn't really an option. Today's movie is not only set within a warehouse, but is full of trigger-happy people that are ready to aim. So can a shoot-em-up work when it's all in one place? Let's see if Free Fire can work. Sometime during the 1970's in Boston, a group of people are meeting in a warehouse to purchase several arms. Two guys, Stevo (played by Sam Riely) and Bernie (played by Enzo Cilenti) first come in an RV. They then meet up with two IRA members Chris (played by Cillian Murphy) and Frank (played by Michael Smiley). While waiting for a representative, Justine (played by Brie Larson) comes in to take up on the deal. Just as their getting to know each other, Ord (played by Armie Hammer) comes to bring them inside. It's here their buying some high-class weapons from a dealer Vernon (played by Sharlto Copley). Things go smoothly until one of the goons working for Vernon recognizes Stevo as the man who raped his cousin. Rather then apologize, Stevo instead insults him more leading the two fighting each other. It escalates into a bullet being fired at one of the parties. This makes everyone grab a weapon or two as the go to their corner and pretty much battle to the death or until police arrive. I have to give Free Fire a lot of credit for trying to emulate the Quentin Tarantino style with similar dirty dialogue, a nostalgia-fueled soundtrack, and an uncertainty of who will make it out alive. In fact, I was on board for the first twenty minutes before they start shooting when we get an idea of who everyone is. It's not to say that good banter couldn't have happened as they were shooting each other, but I was board the majority of the time. That has to do with the fact that neither the acting nor characters were that interesting. Sharlto Copley, Armie Hammer, and Cillian Murphy seemed to be the only ones I was invested in. Everyone else seemed very bland, including Brie Larson. This goes to show that you need a juicy script in order to make these situations work. The other thing I will comment on is the action, while is not spectacular, does allow for some inventive situations given their claustrophobic location. I thought about The Belko Experiment, which had a similar premise, but I remember that and it's costars more then I do for Free Fire. Along with a better script that took advantage of it's over-the- top scenario, it had memorable characters that you wanted to follow to the end. I expected Free Fire to be a lot funnier and for a movie that was produced by Martin Scorsese, I was let down. I'll give this four bad looking RVs out of ten. Free Fire has a great idea of a tense action comedy, but it fails to live up to the premise. Despite some good moments, they are not enough to recover from a botched execution. Free Fire is a misfire.

Nine people with terrible aim shoot at concrete without expressing emotion for 90 minutes. You might call this an arthaus gore shootout but with too much john Denver. Mind-numbingly boring cinematography and editing, and as far as I can tell the only lens they used was mid-century misogyny. Great cast, but bad enough to be a cult classic in 10 years maybe?

In 1970s Boston a contingent of IRA men schedule a meeting with arms sellers in a derelict factory only to become embroiled in an argument that finishes in a shoot-out One constantly thinks that director Ben Wheatley is on the brink of great things. With FREE FIRE you might have thought he'd hit the international target. Set in America ( Though amazingly it's shot in Brighton. England ) and classed as a blackly comical thriller in the style of Tarantino you'd have thought it might have done better at the box office but fails slightly on two levels Firstly Tarantino is a brand name and unless your name is Quentin Tarantino it's a mistake with hindsight to emulate this style of film making because you're just going to slip in to parody. In fact even Tarantino parodies Quentin Tarantino these days with very mediocre results. You want to pitch a film ? Then please don't use the initials QT !!!! SUGGESTIVE SPOILERS !!!! Secondly there's very little story at all . I was very surprised as to how soon things kicked off. I was expecting an hour of insults and plot turns involving double cross and triple cross followed by lots of shooting. The reality is more than two thirds of the run time is taken up by the gun battle which intermittently stops for characters to throw insults at one another before reloading again. The fact that so many of the characters get shot multiple times and they continue to shout insults does become both boring too incredible to be taken seriously , so much so that's it's a surprise when anyone is shot dead That said FREE FIRE isn't really a film to take seriously . You might enjoy with a bag of pop corn and will probably enjoy it more round lads flats with a six pack which might explain why it has underperformed at the box office. One might have also expected more when one of the executive producers is Martin Scorsese

Free Fire is an absolute laugh riot from start to finish and some of the most fun I've had at the cinema in... ever. The pace is established from the get go as once we are introduced to the characters things goes haywire almost immediately. As the film continues some character motivations are made clearer which may lead one to question who's side anyone is actually on, as it turns out, they're all in it for themselves. Whereas some are left in the dark to let the audience ponder at their own freewill. Shooting starts due to past events that resurface after two gang members come face to face leaving a road of destruction in their wake. Featuring some of the best sound design I've heard so far this year Wheatley gives his audience a sense of space within the confined environment in which I feel he purposely neglects in his visual representations. The action on screen is messy and convoluted to a point that fits the narrative of what comes to be every man for himself. It's impossible to determine who is where and therefore who's side anybody is actually on. At first I found this to be a problem when watching but giving it some afterthought I came to realise what Ben was aiming for. Using direction of sound to determine each players position on the board. It's quite an ambitious directing choice but I believe Wheatley more than pays off. I've had this argument among friends and those I converse with in Facebook groups and it's about how you don't need your characters to be richly detailed and well developed to make them interesting or memorable. The film in question was Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. The argument which was presented to me is that of - you know they're all going to die anyway so spending time developing characters would hurt the pace of the film. It's a film used to bridge the gaps between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. And that's fine but the writing still has to be good enough to make those characters stand out regardless of their outcome. This is a film that understands this completely and something Ben Wheatley and wife/co-writer Amy Jump seem to have the most control in. I've had my reservations about Armie Hammer for while but Free Fire once again goes to show that anyone can give a good performance when they have the right script behind them. By far the strongest element to this film is the chemistry all of our actors have and the distinct personality each and every person uniquely has, Sharlto Copley, Jack Reynor, and Sam Riley especially and the pairing of Armie and Michael Smiley make for some quite hilarious back and forth one liners. Having such life in their performances and such fluidity in the screenplay is what make so congenial. Marvel could learn a thing or two when it comes to using jokes in your action scenes. In the end, Free Fire is a thrilling, hilarious, action packed ball of insanity that is not without it's flaws, mostly with Brie Larson's character as I feel she was kind of sidelined without much to do, she was certainly left too much in the shadows, I would have liked to see more of her. Of course the moments she had on screen were definitely benefiting. But my willingness to look past them as they're not too major is my sheer enjoyment of the movies denouement which had me smiling from ear to ear so much that my jaw started hurting. So far the only Ben Wheatley film that I've actually enjoyed, I hope he can keep a hot streak alive.

A meeting in a deserted warehouse between two gangs turns into a shootout and a game of survival. Starring... quite a cool bunch of young-ish actors like Brie Larson, Cillian Murphy, Amie Hammer, Noah Taylor, Sam Riley. Too bad the movie can't match their potential. It only reminds us how boring indie crime comedies can be. „Free Fire" is a charmless witless effort to capture some of that pre-Madonna Guy Ritchie or early Tarantino greatness – only without the humor, sense of style, energy or anything to justify its existence, really. Co-screenwriter/director Ben Wheatley has managed to create little if any of the fun or adrenalin he surely surely must've been imagining while planning all this. There's literally almost nothing to feel excited about, no humor, snappy lines, stylish action scenes, nothing… AND this surely must be one of the dullest gunplay movies in modern cinema history. Only the sound-effects of bullets hitting stuff are noteworthy. Even the plot is almost non-existent consisting mostly of some guys and this one woman yelling, cursing and shooting at each other, mostly lying or crawling on the floor and half-unable to move. There's little dialogue or spoken lines and everybody looks like having stepped out of vintage denim commercial or something, covered in sweat, dirt, and dust. Maybe because the events take place in 1978 Detroit. „Free Fire" must have been semi-interesting exercise for the cast and crew – how to make most events happen in one big room and without anybody moving much. But the result feels more like a bunch of deleted scenes than a proper movie. It doesn't get better in the end. Watch the trailer and you have had an experience much better than the movie itself.

Ben Wheatley certainly has a twisted sense of humour, evident in films such as Sightseers and High-Rise, and he brings it to proceedings once again in Free Fire, a relentlessly entertaining action comedy. Featuring an impressive ensemble cast, Free Fire was a film that had been on my radar for a while. Boston, 1978, and two gangs set a meeting in an abandoned warehouse for an arms deal. It doesn't all exactly go to plan and it's not long before a full on shootout between the two gangs occurs, leading to bullets flying all over the place and a game of survival for everyone involved. Free Fire wastes no time in getting into things and when the entire cast are together, the film really does fire on all cylinders. Ben Wheatley's film is by no means the best film I'll ever see but it is the perfect choice for an entertaining time at the cinema, making sure it doesn't overstay its welcome with a swift ninety minute runtime. Wheatley collaborates once again with Amy Jump to write the film and the result is a quick screenplay that delivers plenty of wit and humour, as well as a shootout that the films builds itself around, which becomes farcical due to the sheer amount of incompetent characters the film plays host to. A screenplay like this deserves a cast to do it justice and Free Fire has exactly that in the shape of an ensemble cast to get excited about. Cillian Murphy has one of the more prominent roles and he manages to bring the coldness we are so used to seeing from him to the role of Chris. Brie Larson gives the film its singular female character and she's certainly no pushover, Larson playing Justine with a sense of grit and superior intellect over her male counterparts. Then there is Armie Hammer, who shines as the overly sarcastic and suave Ord. The man who steals the film from everyone else though is Sharlto Copley as Vernon, an arms dealer who runs his mouth a little too much. Sure, his South African accent makes him sound funnier but there is no doubt that Copley's Vernon gets the majority of the film's quips., and he absolutely revels in them. There's some fine support from Jack Reynor and Sam Riley on show too as a couple of warring members from their respective gangs. For a fun night at the cinema, I can't recommend Free Fire enough. If you're someone who is easily offended by foul language or doesn't like loud noises though, I feel as if you'd take an instant dislike to this film, which would certainly be your loss.

In 1970s Boston, an illegal arms deal goes from bad to worse, leaving a group of low lifes with guns drawn, for an hour long shootout in an abandoned warehouse. The problem with this seemingly never ending shootout, complete with guns which hold about 96 bullets, and characters who are shot multiple times, only to show no ill affects, is that it never looks real. The problem with an entire film peopled with one dimensional characters is that we don't care if they survive or not. The problem with the comic relief is that it isn't funny. Only about a half dozen lines made me laugh, and Armie Hammer is the only one to put in a memorable performance, with the remainder of the cast just simply * there *, occupying space. According to Boxofficemojo, this $10.000.000 budgeted film only took in a horrifying $994,430 from 1070 cinemas in its opening weekend, placing it at number 17 for its first week. So, apparently, I wasn't the only person to see it in an empty cinema.

Overall this is a very weak film thanks to the directing and lack of a storyline or even a script. I would not be surprised if you told me this film took two days to film and a week to edit, it is just that poorly done. Don't be fooled by the gun action in the trailer, the actors are literally crawling around on their hands and knees for the whole second half of the film. I wanted to like this movie, I really did. Most of the actors in this film are usually great. And the guy who directed this did Kill List, which is freaking brilliant so yeah.. I'm not sure how this film turned into a joke but sh!t happens I guess. Final score, skip it.

I've seen some stinkers - The Room, Manos: The Hands of Fate, Ryan Reynolds's Green Lantern - and they all pale before this movie. Rarely has such a capable, talented cast been wasted on a script this bad, with a director this bad. I'm not sure what they were paid, but I hope it was Jaws III level money, otherwise it's an utter embarrassment to otherwise good careers. Where to begin... An arms deal gone bad. That's a fantastic opening to work from, which many other films have taken and done well with - Lord of War, etc, etc. But this? This is just... Milquetoast pablum. People yell and shoot at each other for over an hour and nothing changes, nothing advances, no truths are uncovered. Other than the amazing potential for actors to sustain flesh wounds, and guns to have Hollywood-level magazine counts. There is little more to this than actors yelling and shooting. I wish there was, I do. And so will you, if you have the misfortune to see this steaming pile. But it's not bad enough to be funny, or campy enough for drunken laughs with friends. It's just... Bad. Don't see this film. Do anything else. Do your taxes. Sort your socks. Mop your floors, clean out your dryer lint trap. All of these things will provide you with more entertainment than this film could ever hope to.

When I first saw the trailer for this film a few months ago, I was very intrigued considering I am a fan of Brie Larson and the trailer actually made it look like a fun time. Not to mention I am a huge fan of A24 films. However, after finally seeing it, I can say that this movie is a snooze. If you enjoy watching a group of terrible people shooting at each other for an hour and a half without any depth or conclusion, then this is the movie for you. I wanted to like this film, but it honestly would have worked so much better as a short film. Watching people curse and shoot at each other for 90 minutes gets very boring and tedious after a while. Save your money on this one. I would only recommend this if you are a die-hard fan of shootout movies or if you're able to see it for free on the Internet. Otherwise, avoid at all costs!