Ben Wheatley's newest flick is what would happen if you cross the climax of a Western with Tarantino and place it in 1970. But it's actually entertaining.
I've always preferred his horror pictures, and I love High-Rise despite its being a bit of a mess, but Free Fire does some really interesting things. It's essentially an hour and a half of chaos and comedy with delightful if forgettable performances, excellent choreography, a wisecracking screenplay, and lots of gun violence. I don't much care for shootouts in movies, let alone movies about shootouts, but there was enough fluff here to keep me invested. And, of course, it has a double-digit body count.
The primary fluff? Costumes. This movie is period all the way, and the '70s flair is killer. The movie is an homage to '70s B-movie style, especially with the polyester and shoulder pads, even with its lighting, which douses the set in a golden, hazy hue. "The set" is correct because there is only one: an old warehouse in Boston that serves, at least on this occasion, as the business location of an arms dealer. Sharlto Copley plays Vernon, a raging psychopath, selling his wares this time to some Irish Republican guerrillas, led by Cillian Murphy. Their associates and henchmen -- including the ferocious Brie Larson and adorable Armie Hammer -- are about evenly divided, totaling 13 characters. 12 are angry men, whose anger issues and innate violence are ignited by the revelation that one (Jack Reynor) had beaten up another (Sam Riley) recently for abusing his female cousin.
It doesn't take long -- the exposition is the first third of the movie, and frankly by the end of the film I still wasn't sure of the character names or motivations -- before bullets fly. The avenger shoots the abuser, and immediately both sides grapple for the guns (which seems unnecessary since almost all of them already had other guns on their persons) and it's, well, free fire. By the halfway mark of the movie, everyone's been shot. Half of them can't even walk. But their mouths are working just fine, and their wisecracks and insults hit the mark far more often than their bullets do. It seems very American that the characters stay hidden most of the movie, popping up sporadically to fire a stream of shots at nothing in particular or at least in the general direction of another person, and only manage to injure each other occasionally.
It's an absurdist chamber piece, but instead of wondering when Godot will show up, these guys (and gal) are trying to kill each other for no discernible reason. Several times characters pointedly mention not knowing who shot whom, or who is dead or alive. More importantly, they don't seem to care. Even after one particularly gruesome death, the characters seem to remain in good humor. The violence was inevitable, the results of that violence are expected and witnessed, but there are no lessons to be learned. It's a damning indictment of gun culture even as it defends that culture against those who would misuse it: Namely, raving lunatics and insecure men seeking to overcompensate.
There's no shortage of intelligence in this movie, though I would have preferred a bit more clarity on characters and their motivations. Sure, the film is shot and edited with precision, and how the makers managed to find so many interesting perspectives in a single, small warehouse is beyond me. But ultimately I didn't much care for anyone, so I didn't feel anything as they died. It's the opposite of a horror film, where you so often expect everyone will die but get attached to them anyway; here, I wanted to love Larson and Murphy and Hammer and Copley, but I wasn't given the chance to know them. The film even comments on this, near the climax: The only phone in the warehouse is ringing (I know, a shootout movie without cell phones is not something we see much of these days). The only phone is in the upstairs office, so of course going there is akin to suicide. One character finally picks up the phone and is immediately shot and killed by Copley. We hear the recorded message, offering a free lifetime supply of premier ground meat. The irony is that half the people in the warehouse are already ground meat, and the other half are well on their way.
IMDb: Free Fire
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