Free Fire hits more than it misses

Brie Larson in Free Fire. Image courtesy A24.

The central joke behind Free Fire is very clever. It’s a comedy of errors, a group of hard gangsters pushed to the boiling point only to reveal how terrible they are at actually being gangsters. And, for a while there, the joke sticks and the very dark punchline earns the guffaws writer/director Ben Wheatley and co-writer Amy Jump seek. That is until the end of the second act when the joke grows stale and the plot is dragged forward to reach the 90 minute mark for a movie with a 60 minute plot. Screams of agony are only funny for so long.

But, again, for a while there everything works pretty well thanks to the simplicity of the concept. Stick a bunch of gangsters played by reliable character actors (Cillian Murphy, Sam Riley, Sharlto Copley, Armie Hammer, Michael Smiley, Babou Ceesay and Noah Taylor) along with an A-list starlet (Brie Larson) in a room, allow tempers to boil over during an awkward gun deal, and watch as the situation goes out of control. The joke of it comes after the tension devolves into violence, and its revealed that every single person in that room is a terrible shot. In lieu of actually killing the other guys, they keep hitting calves and ankles and shoulders and feet, places that don't prevent others from shooting back but limit movements to agonizing shuffles and crawls. (The mouths rarely stop screaming, bellowing, cursing or some combination of the three.) That every character in Free Fire has what appears to be infinite ammo results in a video game reality mixed with the darkest undertones of a slapstick comedy routine.

Wheatley and Jump get a lot of mileage out of that concept by first earning the sloppy violence with effective tension building. They set up the scenario well enough that any one thing could trigger a bloodbath, whether it’s the lack of trust between the gun sellers and buyers; personality conflicts among Copley, Murphy, Hammer and Smiley; the isolated location offering little escape; or the abundance of John Denver music. Pragmatic business reasons would be a little too logical for Free Fire; Wheatley and Jump prefer to set things up with a mix of fate and machismo completely unrelated to the deal. It makes sense given the context and nature of the situation; it's far easier to compromise on business than it is on ego and blind loyalty to idiots.

Free Fire works long enough to offer a generally favorable rating. It is often hilarious watching this group of tough guys launch invectives and vomit bullets at one another, their jokes and mocks interspersed with the aforementioned screams. The cast sells the hell out of it, reveling in both the physical pain and the pain of their insults. Hammer in particular appears to have the most fun as a very dry fellow who cares little about the people around him; his loyalty is based solely on money, making him a moderately independent agent who shoots one side while insulting the other. But there's a built-in limit to the premise. At some point the bullets have to start hitting their targets and people have to die to advance the plot forward. Free Fire's humor drops as its accuracy increases, the stakes becoming a little too real. Wheatley and Jump try to make up for it by heightening the violence to make the situation more ridiculous, but it comes across as more mean spirited than the violently silly tone the film has for its first half. Free Fire stops being fun as it evolves into a traditional crime film with the unhappy endings for all involved. It's not an unfair fate for the players involved, but it isn't an overly interesting one either.

The pragmatic but unimaginative ending is one of the signs that Wheatley and Jump didn't quite have a full grasp on their project. They needed a more interesting direction for the film to take after the violence loses its humorous punch, but what they have is more over the top lunacy than interesting. Ultimately there isn't really enough going on to make 90 minutes work easily, so the movie ends more on a whimper than a bang. There remains a lot to like about Free Fire, but it still leaves viewers feeling a little unsatisfied.

Review: Three and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: R

Run time: 90 minutes

Genre: Action

Ask Away

Target audience: Shoot 'em up fans and people down for some real dark comedy.

Take the whole family?: Nope.

Theater or Netflix?: It's fun for a night at home, but not worth a trip out to the cinema.

How Boston is this film?: Not as much as one would suspect. Despite being set in the city, there is a surprising dearth of proper Boston accents or even the city's personalities. The two supposed local boys are both played by British actors, and they lack the unfounded bravado hinted at in a proper Boston accent.

Watch this as well?: Reservoir Dogs remains the pinnacle movie about gangsters stuck in a garage waiting for fate to play out. Also something worth at least an interesting glance are the Clive Owen vehicle Shoot 'Em Up and one of the more underappreciated films from 2016, The Nice Guys.

Follow me on Twitter @EricMungenast