In Pierre Morel’s “The Gunman,” veteran actor Sean Penn gets
to channel his inner aging action hero in the vein of Liam Neeson, who starred
in Morel’s earlier film “Taken,” among others. Here Penn plays Jim Terrier, an
expert sniper who works at a private security firm protecting humanitarian aid
efforts in The Democratic Republic of Congo. While doing this, he’s assigned to
assassinate the Mining Minister, a job that will come to haunt him in the
future. Seven years later, after unnamed assassins attempt to kill him, Jim must figure
out who’s hunting him.
Penn is competent in the role. He can certainly kick ass and
clearly has been working out. A few scenes feature a shirtless Sean, displaying
his bulging muscles. And Jimmy’s a resourceful fella, I’ll give him that. We’re
never in doubt of his ability to gain the upper hand in a situation. Unfortunately,
Penn doesn’t have much charisma or the soothing gravelly voice Liam Neeson has.
Add to this the fact that the character of Jim is one-dimensional—reminiscent
of countless other “expert action heroes”-- and you’ve got an underwhelming
action protagonist trying to drive a cliché, derivative action picture. Most of
the time in these kinds of pictures, if the star has personality or some style he
or she can elevate the material. If your movie doesn’t even have that, well,
you’re in trouble.
The action sequences are shot in typical Bourne-style shaky
cam, a fad that’s, at this point, stale and kind of annoying to watch. In a
fight scene I like to see the fist, or leg (or melee weapon) make contact with
the body. Yet, to Morel’s credit, the action beats are well spaced throughout
the film. There was never a moment I felt overwhelmed by any of the action set
pieces. At the same time, the non-action sequences aren’t very compelling
either. The plot is standard issue “cover up” fare and most of the story events
and big revelations are obvious twenty minutes before they appear. During some
moments I got antsy waiting for the characters to figure out a revelation I had
already figured out a scene ago.
The only mildly interesting aspect of the movie is the
underlying theme of business corrupting philanthropy. As the set up above
suggests, the very same security company hired to provide protection to aid
workers could also be hired by a private company to do bad things, bad things
that can throw an already unstable country into even more chaos. However this
is only lightly explored--Morel instead choosing to focus on the more generic
aspects of the movie—so it feels tacked on, creating tonal confusion.
Even worse, for a movie this derivative, “The Gunman” takes
itself awfully damn seriously, opting to be stiff and rigid, as opposed to embracing
its silly, pulpy material. Penn is the worst offender, running around the
streets of Barcelona and London—gun in hand—like he’s Daniel Day Lewis. Only
the supporting cast--containing the likes of Javier Bardem as an old friend and
Mark Rylance as the former head of the security company Jim worked for--manage
to have some fun, their performances verging on loopy at times. A scene towards
the beginning featuring an intoxicated Bardem is probably the most memorable
moment in the movie. Sadly, even their contributions aren’t enough to save the
picture. So, “The Gunman” dully moves along from one plot point to another.
Otherwise, there’s not much else to report. There are some gunfights,
a love interest, a finale at a bull-fighting ring and Jim has some sort of post-concussion brain
condition. Another aspect of the story that’s tacked on, serving no real substantial
purpose in the end. On the whole “The Gunman” isn’t terrible, it’s just not
very good. Dull to watch most of the time and does nothing to stand out. And
Penn makes for a rather unremarkable action hero.
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