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

Fate of the Furious doesn't mess with success

Charlize Theron and Vin Diesel in The Fate of the Furious. Image courtesy Universal Pictures.

My adoration for much of the Fast and the Furious franchise entries is hypocritical given my overarching loathing for movies similar to Fast and the Furious. This franchise commits all the sins I rant and rail against committed by other franchises. They big and bloated movies with empty plots and little going for them aside from spectacle and frequent speeches about family. Some of this will be an attempt to explain why I love a series of movies with little connection to reality, because all of those reasons explain my joy of the most recent entry in the series, the fairly awesome The Fate of the Furious.

There isn't anything overly different with Fate of the Furious compared with the rest of the franchise, the exception being the absences of Jordana Brewster and the late Paul Walker. The rest of the main cast is back (Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Ludacris, Tyrese Gibson, Dwayne Johnson) along with a few additions from the last film (Kurt Russell, Nathalie Emmanuel, Jason Statham) and two new players (villain Charlize Theron and agent Scott Eastwood). Ridiculous heists are pulled in locales across the world; the word “family” is referenced ad nauseam; Johnson and Statham drop a few quips; beautiful cars get totaled; beautiful people get ogled; and a whole host of other similar shenanigans ensue. It’s the same as every film in this franchise since Fast Five, the one where the series shifted toward the globetrotting model it currently follows to enormous box office returns and at least two more entries in this series through 2021.

Looking at this film and the rest of the series critically little of it really holds up. The plots are thin and lack general logic. The movies always run on the long side despite the thin plots, with the less engaging entries losing steam in between the grandiose action sequences (a problem that plagues Fate of the Furious). Diesel, the face and de facto heart of the franchise, continues his tradition of not putting that much effort into his performance as Dominic Toretto. The amount of time the camera spends on certain female body parts remains a little disconcerting. And the films are generally hesitant to try to engage viewers in too many intellectual challenges.

Yet I still leave the theater pumped after watching these ludicrous movies. For all the flaws the series has, the positives have outweighed the negatives as a whole since Fast Five. Diesel's acting remains an issue, but he's surrounded by enough personality from the likes of Rodriguez, Johnson, Russell, Statham, Gibson, Russell and Ludacris to make his inherent lack of emotional range sort of work in his favor. Adding in Theron as the Fate of the Furious’ big bad is a boon as well; her iciness and scenery nibbling make her an unpredictable and surprisingly vicious femme fatale. Movies like this don't necessarily need great acting to work; a surplus of personality is often just as effective.

Besides, the real selling point for this franchise and Fate of the Furious is the spectacle. There's a simple level of joy to be taken solely from watching Vin Diesel race someone while driving backwards in a car that's on fire, or watching the main cast somehow avoid a freaking submarine while driving on ice covered water in Russia. There's the sequence where Theron makes it rain with cars, a helicopter getting taken out by an EMP, Johnson using his arm to divert a torpedo, and a pretty solid prison riot highlighted by stompings put on by Johnson and Statham. Just writing those things down is ridiculous enough, but the fact the film commits to these feats with a level of normality is fascinating in its own right. Whatever reaction the characters have to all of this insanity is a few steps below how it should play out in real life.

But this series is based in fantasy, a point the various directors who have come and gone have generally agreed upon. Anything can happen in the Fast and the Furious universe, and the only thing the filmmakers can do from one film to the next is stretch what anything means. It's fun to watch them get more and more creative without quite hitting the point of desperation. And while Fate of the Furious never hits the level of absurdity that makes Fast Five and Furious 7 so entertaining, it's still a damn fun film.

Review: Four out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG-13

Run time: 136 minutes

Genre: Action

Ask Away

Target audience: Folks who've lined up to watch the last seven movies.

Take the whole family?: This one gets a little bloodier than some of the previous ones, so stick within a year or two of the PG-13 rating.

Theater or Netflix?: Theater is good, but maybe avoid the IMAX if it isn’t a matinee.

What do they do about Paul Walker?: Even though the actor died before the release of Furious 7, his character Brian is referenced in this one as being alive but retired, just as he was at the end of the previous film. It was kind of nice to see the filmmakers avoid overly inserting Walker (sadly at the expense of Jordana Brewster), but a scene at the end makes for a strange coda given the circumstances.

Watch this as well?: Fast Five remains the glorious, bonkers highlight of this franchise. I'm also a very enthusiastic fan of Furious 7 even with the reduced Dwayne Johnson presence; adding in Kurt Russell and Jason Statham proved to be nice touches.

Gifted's sweetness can't mask plot, character flaws

Mckenna Grace and Chris Evans in Gifted. Image courtesy Fox Searchlight.

There isn't that much about Gifted worth remembering after its 101 minutes are over. It has a few good enough ideas in there, endearing performances and a couple of moments that can invoke involuntary weeping on occasion. But the final act is bitter, and the additional time to reflect reveals some notable plot holes and a thoroughly unremarkable final product. It's an enjoyable enough movie in the moment, but one that leaves viewers empty at the end.

That isn’t to say Gifted is truly bad. It is admittedly a pretty likable film starring very likable actors putting in tremendously charming performances. There's a great rapport between stars Chris Evans and Mckenna Grace, their performances as a low-key uncle and precocious niece balancing each other and forging a pretty great fictional relationship. The film also has Jenny Slate putting in a remarkably restrained performance as Grace's first-grade teacher, and Octavia Spencer is around to be Octavia Spencer and win over the audience with her pitch-perfect Octavia Spencer-ing. They contribute greatly to the much appreciated genial vibe the movie aims for in its first two acts. Even the drama over what to do with Grace's brilliance builds, director Marc Webb and screenwriter Tom Flynn avoid throwing in over-the-top screaming or additional theatrical moments to keep things grounded. The arrival of Evans' mother (Lindsay Duncan), who shows up to move Grace to Boston for more formal education, doesn’t result in forced drama either. The conversations between her and Evans remain civil enough and sometimes regretful about a broken past.

It's during the first 70-minutes or so that Gifted offers up an interesting philosophical question concerning the cost of genius. Grace's intelligence is at the center of the movie's drama, with Evans' wish for his niece to have a normal life fighting against Duncan's pursuit of her granddaughter's mathematical potential. Both sides make fair points about whether or not genius owes anything to society. A child should be allowed to be a kid, but having a brilliant child go through a regular school day is counterproductive to their needs and their greater potential. The debate itself is interesting and is handled with respect for both arguments and in a generally civil manner.

The problems arise when any additional thought is put into how a situation like this should be handled in real life. Gifted shifts its focus to an either/or proposition, with the girl either attending public school or going to an elite program and evolving into a computer. It takes until the very end of the movie for Webb and Flynn to admit that a third option, challenging the girl with collegiate courses part-time and send her to school to achieve the necessary socialization, both exists and makes the most sense. The belated realization of that course of action makes Evans' character, a former associate professor, look like kind of an idiot or at least a jerk, considering he was willing and eager to offer zero intellectual rigor for his niece. Childhood is designed to be challenging; revoking that aspect of it wholesale is bad parenting, and a point the filmmakers keep largely hushed even as the level of brilliance Grace's character exhibits increases every ten minutes.

Yet the worst characterization is granted to Duncan. Initially portrayed as someone willing to be moderately reasonable and have some compassion for her children is painted at the end as an absolute monster willing to ruin her granddaughter's life and let a beloved orange one-eyed cat die because the cat is an inconvenience. Aside from providing Evans a rare literal save the cat moment, it strips Duncan's character of her humanity and turns her into a cartoon villain nearly ghoulish in her pursuit of intellectual glory. Why the dark turn needed to exist is unclear considering Gifted went out of its way to avoid painting any one character as evil.

It's at this point when the flaws Gifted got away with for so long come to the forefront. The little clichés it used to carry the plot forward become clear, as do the less than stellar ways actresses like Slate and Spencer are utilized, wasting a fair amount of talent in the process. Gifted gets a lot of mileage from the performances by Evans and Grace, along with the presence of the one-eyed cat, but it doesn't do enough to support their efforts and presence. Charm can at least make a movie watchable, but it can't do much more than that without a well-told story and a strong final act.

Review: Three out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG-13

Run time: 101 minutes

Genre: Drama
 

Ask Away

Target audience: People who are interested in watching geniuses wrestle with their standards.

Take the whole family?: The PG-13 rating seems fair for the minor adult content and, mostly, the lack of interest anyone younger than that would have for it.

Theater or Netflix?: Wait for it to stream.

Does Chris Evans work as an everyman?: He does shine in one of the rare human roles he's gotten. Evans has a low-key charm that works for movies like this, sort of like Kevin Costner but with personality. If he does eventually leave the Marvel Cinematic Universe he hopefully finds a home of sorts in romantic comedies and mild dramas.

Watch this as well?: Director Marc Webb is responsible for one of my favorite romantic comedies from the last decade, (500) Days of Summer, which shares the underlying geniality as Gifted but is a more interesting and innovative movie.