Jim Terrier (Sean Penn) is an ex-soldier working under contract in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. His girlfriend, Annie (Jasmine Trinca) works for the same NGO as he does, in a medical position. Felix (Javier Bardem) works as a contact for Jim and is interested in Annie. As part of his contract, Jim assassinates the mining minister and has to flee the continent. When he returns eight years later, digging wells, he uses some bad-ass moves to foil an attempted assassination on himself and when he begins to investigate, finds his past catching up with him.
The Gunman's plot is in a league of it's own, somehow managing to be endlessly clichéd and at the same time, frustratingly convoluted. It often feels like they're specifically adding unnecessary detail and opening up new story arcs to mask the plot holes. Just for example, early on, there's an attempted assassination on Jim, where the gunmen have vials of some 'no-frills' poison. Jim takes the vials, then somehow gets them past customs to show to his mates in London; that might seem nit-picky but it's just the tip of the iceberg. The characters seem to just spew endless jargon, followed by a "we need to go to (insert exotic location)" which seems like a good excuse to consume more of the $40 million budget, an enormous amount of money for an action thriller that really only has a couple of action sequences.
The denouement significantly improves on the hum-drum storyline, but it covers way too much ground, revealing erroneous details and trying to tie up loose-ends with about as much success as a Llama with a ball of string. The Gunman ultimately takes the path most followed, with a story that's both dull and unoriginal. The opening act set in the Congo only serves as a brief, unnecessary establishing point, and to me, using another nation's crisis as a central story arc, then abandoning it in favour of the regular girl/villain/revenge story is not just a cop-out, it's an insult to those that are actually suffering.
The characters are no better. Javier Bardem is completely underused and has a very insignificant role, especially given his prominence on the poster. Bardem is a very talent actor, but here he's just playing an under-developed douchebag, and there's no acting around that. Idris Elba is only in the film for about the last twenty minutes, and Sean Penn joins the ranks of middle-aged stars playing bland characters who somehow punch louder than a clap of thunder but deliver lines with the dramatic force of a gerbil. Ray Winstone brings some much needed cockney relief but is unfortunately very-much a secondary character. The two strongest performances come Trinca and Mark Rylance, who I haven't actually seen in anything til now.
Given that Morel is also a cinematographer, it should come as no surprise that the visuals are really this film's only saving grace (though the actual DP on The Gunman was Flavio Martinez Labiano). The gritty look is in no way innovative, especially for the action/thriller genre, but along with some decent sound design, it does manage to build the tension. The fight scenes also seem to be extremely well choreographed, though they cut away so much that it's difficult to actually enjoy them. The most enjoyable element of The Gunman was listening to the elderly couple behind me discussing how ripped Sean Penn is.
If you're the sort of person that cherishes the Taken franchise, then you'll probably enjoy this, though then again there's not that much mindless action here either. Not even the strong cast could save this from being a terrible movie.
If you're the sort of person that cherishes the Taken franchise, then you'll probably enjoy this, though then again there's not that much mindless action here either. Not even the strong cast could save this from being a terrible movie.
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