It also proves increasingly hard to care about these seemingly indestructible combatants, who stubbornly persist in their pointless fight despite being shot a dozen times each. Despite some superbly choreographed pyrotechnics and kinetically nimble camerawork, the action becomes repetitive and confusing once the heavy shooting starts. A key disappointment is when it becomes clear that this is pretty much all the film has to offer. Before long, everybody is firing indiscriminately and the warehouse becomes a battleground.Ī key pleasure of Free Fire is the wisecracking back-and-forth between characters who aim to wound each other with words as well a bullets, literally adding insult to injury. The mood is already combustible when a preexisting feud between two minor foot soldiers, junkie Stevo (Sam Riley) and trigger-happy Harry (Jack Reynor), escalates into an exchange of gunfire. But his sneery attitude puts everyone on edge, almost jeopardizing the deal. An extravagantly bearded Armie Hammer appears to be channeling the young Peter Fonda as Ord, a suave stoner working as frontman for the arms dealers. Sporting period-perfect Farrah Fawcett feathered waves and a nice deadpan wit, Larson plays Justine, an intermediary for the Irishmen.Īuthentically horrible retro facial hair abounds in Free Fire, which gleefully wallows in its lurid disco-era fashions. The plot hinges on two politically motivated Irish gunmen, cool-headed Chris (Murphy) and loose-cannon Frank (Michael Smiley), who are seeking to buy a truckload of rifles from flamboyant South African arms dealers Vernon ( Sharlto Copley) and Martin ( Babou Ceesay). The vaguely defined setting is a crumbling waterfront warehouse somewhere in late ‘ 70s Massachusetts, though the main shoot actually took place close to Wheatley’s home base in the English costal town of Brighton. Wheatley and his screenwriter wife, Amy Jump, make the shoot-out not just central to the plot but pretty much the entire plot. The pared-down plot is knowingly high-concept, a remix of ‘ 70s crime thriller tropes that strips away most of the backstory and concentrates instead on an epic gun battle between rival criminal groups, the kind of scene that might occupy a few minutes of screen time at most in a more conventional movie.
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