Open Road Films
Let me clarify for a moment. Sean Penn is not without charisma. But his character in this movie? A different story. Anyway …
The movie Taken did something astounding; with no exaggeration, it created a new career for Liam Neeson as an “older badass” who was somehow entirely believable. It helped that Neeson has a kind of hulking physicality and seething intensity that lends itself well to that sort of thing, and the movie had a brutal energy that hid the trickery of the fight choreography. I think you could make a strong argument that this helped pave the way for the geriatric action beats of The Expendables and RED. Those movies were decent fun, the sequels mixed, to say the least. But it did show that it was possible for older actors to be action stars, just like the young’uns. So I get why Sean Penn took this part.
The Gunman continues that idea, from Pierre Morel the same director of Taken, loosely based on a 1981 novel which perhaps explains the odd tonality of it. The movie combines new styles of brutal action, overwrought dramatic performances, overly complex plots, and a very simplistic set of characters. Sean Penn plays Terrier, a former Special Ops soldier who’s now a mercenary-slash-assassin in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He has a girlfriend, Annie (Jasmine Trinca), who is also an object of desire and theft. That’s the extent of her character, really. Javier Bardem plays Felix, the intermediary between the mercenary group and the murky “customer” ordering the various mercenary acts. If you’re thinking that he has an obvious thing for Annie, you’ve been reading the script.
Terrier works on a team with Cox (Mark Rylance) and other less important characters for a mission in the DRC; but it’s Terrier who must pull the trigger, assassinate a local minister in charge of mining interests, and then flee. Because that’s the setup here, with a very thinly veiled critique of Western corporations literally killing to maintain the capability to mine precious materials in a poor and oppressed country. But several years later, after Terrier has literally never even said a word to his former love, he’s volunteering in DRC yet again, I guess to assuage his guilt? He surfs too, which I suppose is meant to be character building but is actually bewildering.
The action is pretty good, but there are long stretches of, literally, just people walking from place to place, which is frustrating. tweet
After an attempted attack from killers, Sean Penn (Terrier) must now start his action movie, killing “bad guys” (it’s all relative) and saving Annie because reasons. Now Sean Penn bulked himself into excellent shape here, although he’s kind of boring in his characterization. He has a lot of deep sadness, guilt and intensity, but it’s hard to care because he’s just a killer who’s also a volunteer worker. Just another mercenary. The action is pretty good, but there are long stretches of, literally, just people walking from place to place, which is frustrating.
Mark Rylance was good here as a guy with moral complexity, and Ray Winstone shows up as an unlikely ally, doing a pretty good job too. Javier Bardem is fine, but his character is pointless. And there’s there’s Idris Elba, getting high billing even though he’s basically hardly in the movie. And Jasmine Trinca is fine too, but her character doesn’t have much to do. There’s a lot of stylistic coolness in the movie and interesting visual choices, but it drags. A lot. This won’t catapult Sean Penn in a new, Liam Neeson-style acting change, but it’s okay. It’s not as fun as Taken or the recent Kingsman, and it’s not smart enough to be clever. Instead it’s just … there.
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