Free Fire (2017)

Free Fire isn't so much a misfire. It's more that it is shooting blanks. Free Fire is this idea, that you take the exciting, climactic  part of an action movie, the final shoot out, and make it into the whole film. Why not focus on the part we came for? The idea is incredibly workable. Throw a bunch of fascinating characters into a confined space, each with a reason to be a bit trigger happy, and let it play itself out. But Free Fire misses on so many counts leaving the audience rather bored.

First the characterization. This would have been the clincher. If we could have cared about the characters, if we could have believed in them, likely Free Fire would have been more entertaining. But no one here is anything more than a two dimensional cliche. The film apes Tarantino but comes no where close to approaching his ability to give us rich twelve dimensional characters within a few lines of dialogue. I mean, who can? But the problem is, in a film like this, we needed that as a grounding. Otherwise it's a big room full of bland people shooting at each other and it's hard to care. Sharlto Copley's character is the biggest waste. It is clear what they are trying to do with this character but he is so plainly an uninteresting version of the character he should be.

Then there is the dialogue. Again, shadows of what we would have hoped for. The plot is there. There is enough to set up the action without dragging it down. But the characters' interactions are so paint by numbers, so been-there-done-that, it pulls us from the film. There is supposed wit that just isn't funny, but we can tell we're supposed to laugh, so we attempt a half laugh cause that's really all the script can muster. Again, what I would have given for a Tarantino rewrite. Even at his most phone-it-in his back and forth is more interesting than this. Plus the dialogue is riddled with sexist homophobic language. You can make all arguments you want about "historical accuracy" but there is a way to paint characters as sexist and homophobic through their speech and there is a way to just seek laughs at the expense of part of your audience. This film falls on the side of the latter.

And then there is the action. Director Ben Wheatley hasn't mastered an action sequence yet. This is a single big room basically yet he finds he is incapable of setting up a sense of that space. We are so often just watching random shots of firing. For most of the film we have no idea where anyone is in relation to anyone else. There are long moments of the film where characters just shoot randomly. It's boring. Boring. In scenes like this you need to build up a sense of relevance, gravity, jeopardy. Most of that felt missed.

So even at it's blissfully short running time, Free Fire feels drawn out. The charisma of its cast is sucked out by bland character development and tiresome dialogue. The action is muted by a lack of sense of jeopardy as characters are able to take bullet after bullet without anything more severe than a limp.  It's a great idea wasted.

Free Fire
Starring: Brie Larson, Cillian Murphy, Sharlto Copley, Armie Hammer, Jack Reynor
Director: Ben Whiteley
Writers: Ben Wheatley, Amy Jump