By LINDSI HEBERT, Staff Reporter.
Directed by Pierre Morel and released to theaters March 20, 2015, “The Gunman” is as advertised: a gunman. More specifically, a mercenary named Terrier (Sean Penn) is hired to take out the minister of mines in the Congo. He is incredibly successful, and now must flee the country as riots and mayhem erupt, leaving his girlfriend and all his buddies behind to deal with the mess.
Skip forward eight years, and Terrier has returned to the Congo to help establish clean water sources for remote villages when he’s attacked by a group of hitmen that end up getting several people in the village killed. Now, he’s brought back into the fold and starts making contact with the other members of his squad to find out exactly what’s going on, which is hard considering he’s now suffering from memory loss and migraines.
I really wanted “The Gunman” to be a sleek action movie with lots of awesome fights and plot, but unfortunately that didn’t happen. Not that there weren’t some cool fight scenes here and there, the pacing was just really off. The amount of time that passed between action scenes just didn’t flow really well. Honestly, I got bored and watching the rest of “The Gunman” started to feel like a chore. It really was forgettable, and if I hadn’t taken notes throughout the film, I would have completely forgotten it.
The way that his illness worked seemed to be rather convenient, as well. In the middle of his action stuff all of a sudden the camera would blur out and he’d get sick, maybe vomit. When he wasn’t fighting, though, he acted perfectly fine. At least, as perfectly fine as Sean Penn can look.
A specific part that bothered me is that the movie takes place in 2015 (obviously) and for the most part is set in Barcelona, Spain. During one of the fight scenes, there’s a show down in a bullfighting arena, with some nice scenic shots of the matador waiting for the bull to charge. Normally, I’d be praising the production quality, because that was really nice, but what bothered me was that this was a modern movie and Barcelona has proclaimed itself as an anti-bullfighting city for years before this film took place, so why would there be bullfights still going on? This is the only part of the movie that really stood out to me, and it didn’t stand out for good reasons.
There were some good parts of “The Gunman,” though. I thought the cast of characters were pretty great, interesting when they were on screen without Sean Penn, who really didn’t have much depth at all. I sort of wish I knew more about his girlfriend who was a doctor, or his other mercenary friends. They at least showed more depth of character than Terrier.
There was also a twist ending. No spoilers, of course, but it’s not a predictable twist. “The Gunman” seems to do this thing where it leads you to believe it’s one person and then does a complete 180. It was good, and executed smoothly enough to where it didn’t make me want to call it out and get really annoyed.
On a scale of one to five gummy bears, with five being the highest, “The Gunmen” gets two gummy bears. It’s alright, nothing special, and it’s not memorable, but if you’re looking for a different take on an action movie, go for it.
