Forgive me for I have sinned…I went and paid money to see The Gunman. And you know it was not all that bad, but also nothing to write home about.
The movie was well made and had a long spot of suspense, waiting to see what was going to happen. Then that went way. It’s not a bad movie, just not good enough to necessarily bring up at the water cooler the next day either.
It’s just sort of there.
Given what is out at theaters, it’s far from the worst choice available but not worth changing you’re regular schedule to fit in.
Spoilers!
Sean Penn plays an assassin working for a relief organization in the Congo. There’s quite a lot of mineral wealth and a lot of companies and entities looking to exploit that wealth. Well, the one Penn’s character, Terrier, works for decides to knock of the Minister of Mining, causing Terrier to leave the country and also his girl Annie.
This exit from the Congo brings up the big mystery that drives the first half of the movie. Javier Bardem’s character, Felix, has a thing for Annie and it seems he may have orchestrated Terrier being the trigger man on the assassination so that he would have to leave. It’s all spilled milk until 8 years later when someone tries to kill Terrier and the only line of inquiry leads right back to Felix.
The director does a very good job to this point of keeping you the audience guessing. I kept expecting anyone too close to an open window to catch a bullet. But instead….
Now see what I did there? You now know there will be no surprise bullet, so all tension is gone. That is what The Gunman did. Sigh.
The meeting with Felix reveals he is married to Annie, but Annie still has the hots for Terrier. So they meet at the country house and Terrier figures out he’s being double crossed by tricking Felix into communicating with the ‘bad guys’ out to kill Terrier. So basically, the movie trades the suspense of not knowing where (or whom) the threat is coming from for a chance to show us how clever Terrier is. We learn that Terrier is a smart cookie, but it breaks the tension by telling us ‘they will be here in a minute’. Sigh. I was really hoping to see someone get shot through a window.
OK, now this brings up another point, a sensitive one. In the past, we all knew who the bad guys were because they were blatantly typecast or stereotyped. You know, the middle eastern terrorist or the east European mob guy, perhaps a Hispanic cartel member. Or a east European cartel member. The point I am making, and I know it’s racist, was that there was always a bad guy with a poor shaving schedule who was the obvious bad dude. We understood his motivation because Hollywood has been using the same archetype villains for decades. We see them, we get it. And yeah, it’s a bit racist.
The newest Hollywood staple bad guy…
But now we see the other side of the coin, sort of. Remember The Revenge of the Nerds? Or Van Wilder? The antagonists in those films were always these clean shaven yuppie, all-american types with sandy blonde hair and their shit together. You know, the Alpha Betas. Basically douchebags. Now they work for some alphabet soup agency and follow orders, usually to kill the good guys in Hollywood spy and action films. Why? I guess it’s all political correctness, but one supposes some Hollywood producer was watching Animal House or PCU and had flashbacks to a killer swirlie he suffered in college.
But I digress. The problem is that when we see Mr. All-American trying to kill our hero we STILL have no idea who the frack they are working for, and hence no idea of their motivation. They are just following orders, remember? At least with the old ethnic stereotypes the motivation is implied. Just sayin’. The funny thing is that this change is giving more roles to exactly the group of people (good looking All-American douchebags) who are being represented just fine at the Box Office already, and thus we have even fewer roles for scruffy ethnic types. I know, racist!
So the meeting at the country house is crashed by the Alpha Betas, and Terrier and Annie are on the run from who we still do not know. Well, I do now but I am going to stop here in case you still want to see the movie. The point is all of the tension and suspense that had been built up is gone, and the rest of the movie just plays out like paint by numbers.
At least that’s the way Moby saw it. Your mileage may differ.
Moby Rating: 2 out of 5 Moby’s!
