Director Ben Wheatley is so far known for Kill List, High Rise, and Sightseers, as well as a load of television work (including two episodes of Doctor Who). His latest is Free Fire, a pretty simple story about a gun deal between two gangs that goes horribly wrong in an abandoned factory in Boston back in 1978. Cillian Murphy (Dunkirk, Peaky Blinders) stars as the buyer of the guns, a shipment of M-16s that he hopes to deliver to his countrymen back home in Northern Ireland for use against the British. But the seller, Vernon, a wily South African perfectly played to the wild-eyed hilt by Sharlto Copley (District Nine, The A-Team), delivers a set of completely different machine guns. While not happy, Murphy’s character buys the guns, after trying one of them out right in the abandoned factory (a well-done set that Wheatley actually designed while using the Minecraft video game).
But just when it looks like a potential problem may have been averted, two of the men from each of the gangs recognize each other from a knock-down, dragged-out fight they had the previous night. The cooler heads in the group, like Armie Hammer’s Ord and Brie Larson’s Justine, try to calm the hotheads down. But the frantic attempts at peace fail, and the bullets start flying as the gunfight to end all gunfights begins. Despite sounding like a tragedy, Wheatley and his co-writer Amy Jump play it for laughs, and it works extremely well. With everybody surviving the initial gunfire assault by only getting shot in the arm or leg, the characters--unable to flee--are forced to seek shelter from one another in the nooks and crannies of the factory.
And it soon becomes clear why Wheatley set this film in the seventies--no cell phones, the presence of which probably would have ended the movie five minutes after the gunfight first broke out. This way, the only phone in the abandoned factory is in the office upstairs, and it becomes a cherished object of desire as these whack-jobs all fight to get upstairs without being killed just so they can make a phone call to get some much needed back up. Once the gunfight begins, it gets hard at times to keep track of who’s who--with the exception of Brie Larson, who’s the only woman in the cast.
Larson, an Oscar-winning actor seen recently in Kong: Skull Island, and who will soon play the lead in the superhero movie Captain Marvel, acquits herself quite nicely here. Another standout in the cast is Sharlto Copley, who plays his character Vernon as a completely clueless moron while still managing to be endearing. Armie Hammer (The Man From Uncle) gives another good performance, and Cillian Murphy is as great as always. Despite some confusion as to what’s happening to who during the gunfight (which would probably be close to what a real gunfight would be like, I'd surmise) Free Fire is a vastly entertaining flick that fans of crime thrillers and black comedies would enjoy. It would also make for a great double bill with Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. --SF
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