Review of Free Fire (2017) by Matt C — 12 Apr 2017

If I were in an elongated gunfight, I would probably be the one to make everyone so annoyed by my remarks that I'd probably die first. When you look at it that way, I guess you could say that watching Free Fire was like watching a dozen versions of me on the screen, and that's pretty cool for a while.

I really identified with the gallows humor that's played up throughout Free Fire, and the violent pratfalls strike that balance of over-the-top violence and silliness akin to Tarantino or, to a lesser extent, Monty Python.

It's also a Ben Wheatley film, so if you love his stuff, you'll probably love this. But if you find his efforts to numb themselves over one feature like I sometimes do, you'll think that of this as well.

It's well made with a great cast, but the entire movie really is just one scene that operates on the same level for 90 straight minutes. The story can be summed up in one sentence: a rogue's gallery of silly, short-tempered people--mostly criminals--meet up in an abandoned warehouse for an arms deal that goes wrong, leading to a gloriously ridiculous shootout.

That's really it. There's nothing more, nothing less. If that logline for an hour and a half sounds good to you, you can stop reading this now and go see it. The positives of the movie are plentiful.

The cast, including Brie Larson, Sharlto Copley, Jack Reynor, and Cillian Murphy, have fantastic chemistry and throw themselves into the insanity of the set pieces and banter that bleeds off of the screen.

They're all as good as you would expect and all seem to be having a lot of fun here, and that fun is contagious for a while. Wheatley shoots (heh) the film efficiently and actively, and he and cinematographer Laurie Rose don't just place the camera down and let the action unfold.

Camera movements and some pretty striking shots (heh) play up the action and visual comedy. It's edited cleanly in a way that captures each pop and ping without feeling crowded, and it compliments the tone of the movie well.

I also must say that a fair amount of the jokes in Wheatley and Amy Jump's script made me laugh out loud. The issue with Free Fire is that there is no variation to it at all. I figured that the trailer was a bit misleading in terms of what it showed (or didn't show) in regards to the pace and style of the movie, but the trailer is a really accurate representation of the film as a whole.

As stated earlier, this movie is one scene that's dragged out to an hour and a half. It operates like a sketch in that the characters are all cardboard cutouts and can be fully encapsulated in one sentence each--a badass woman that doesn't take any shit; a guy that almost became a Black Panther; a bunch of silly guys in '70s attire--and the film suffers because of that.

It all adds to the skin-deep nature of the affair, a one-and-done good time that was (mostly) fun while it lasted, but it lasted too long. The third act of Hot Fuzz is a good reference point for pushing something for so long until "how is this still happening?!" is on the viewers' minds.

Free Fire, though, has the viewers ask, "Why is this still happening?" When a movie is operating on a high at all times, the highs and lows become indistinguishable from each other, often feeling bizarrely close to middle ground instead of high ground.

Free Fire is fun for a bit, but once you've seen the first half, you've pretty much seen the whole movie. Oh, shoot. 6.3/10, okay, C+, average, etc.