Review of Free Fire (2017) by Kapten V — 06 May 2017

A meeting in a deserted warehouse between two gangs turns into a shootout and a game of survival. Starring... quite a cool bunch of young-ish actors like Brie Larson, Cillian Murphy, Amie Hammer, Noah Taylor, Sam Riley.

Too bad the movie can't match their potential. It only reminds us how boring indie crime comedies can be.

Free Fire" is a charmless witless effort to capture some of that pre-Madonna Guy Ritchie or early Tarantino greatness - only without the humor, sense of style, energy or anything to justify its existence, really.

Co-screenwriter/director Ben Wheatley has managed to create little if any of the fun or adrenalin he surely surely must've been imagining while planning all this.

There's literally almost nothing to feel excited about, no humor, snappy lines, stylish action scenes, nothing... AND this surely must be one of the dullest gunplay movies in modern cinema history. Only the sound-effects of bullets hitting stuff are noteworthy.

Even the plot is almost non-existent consisting mostly of some guys and this one woman yelling, cursing and shooting at each other, mostly lying or crawling on the floor and half-unable to move.

There's little dialogue or spoken lines and everybody looks like having stepped out of vintage denim commercial or something, covered in sweat, dirt, and dust. Maybe because the events take place in 1978 Detroit.

Free Fire" must have been semi-interesting exercise for the cast and crew - how to make most events happen in one big room and without anybody moving much. But the result feels more like a bunch of deleted scenes than a proper movie.

It doesn't get better in the end. Watch the trailer and you have had an experience much better than the movie itself.