There was a point in time where Ben Wheatley’s Free Fire would have become an instant favorite for me. Around age 21 or so, when a cavalcade of bullets and some cheeky music is all it would take to turn my head, sounds about right. When I was 23, I thought Lucky Number Slevin was pretty brilliant, so there’s no reason why Free Fire wouldn’t have earned my adoration as well.
After all, there’s a lot to like about Free Fire. Starring Brie Larson, Armie Hammer, Cillian Murphy, Sharlton Copley, and a bunch of other people you recognize as that guy who was in that thing, it’s a remarkably simple story: One group (Larson, Murphy, et al.) arrives at a warehouse to buy some guns from a dealer (Copley) via a facilitator (Hammer). Due to a personal dispute among henchmen from each side, the deal goes bad and a shootout ensues. And that’s it. That’s the whole movie. Free Fire is a scant 90 minutes, and it’s all about the shootout.
In a way, it’s refreshing. The film starts a little unevenly, establishing characters and subplots that seem forced, and you wonder exactly what sort of rote crime-focused black comedy we’re in store for. After 5 minutes of these characters delivering pre-meeting dialogue, I was nearly ready to opt out of the film altogether. Nothing was natural or painless. But once the movie settles into the long fight, you can relax a little. This isn’t going anywhere else. There aren’t going to be any big storylines that disappoint you later, because there aren’t any at all. In an age where so many movies feel the need to out-twist or out-set piece one another, I came to appreciate the economy of Wheatley’s and co-writer Amy Jump’s story.
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