Armie Hammer, Brie Larson, Cillian Murphy, Sam Riley, and Michael Smiley (A24)
A feature-length Mexican stand-off makes a great trailer, but does it make a satisfying film? High-Rise helmer Ben Wheatley’s latest film has a sharp premise, but doesn’t take it any further than its logical, exhausting conclusion.
Free Fire is a single-location pot boiler with shades of Reservoir Dogs and other small scale crime thrillers, focusing on an arms deal gone wrong in 1970s Boston. Chris (Cillian Murphy) and Frank (Michael Smiley) are IRA members who want to buy guns from eccentric dealer Vernon (Sharlto Copley). The charming, no nonsense Justine (Brie Larson) is their intermediary, and Vernon’s representative Ord (Armie Hammer) helps run interference. This core group builds a Jenga tower of clashing personalities, but everything seems to be on course.
Unfortunately, Frank’s idiot junkie brother-in-law Stevie (Sam Riley) is on the job, and he happens to have gotten into a bar fight with one of Vernon’s lackeys, Harry (Jack Reynor) the night before. Their animosity sets off this powder keg of enmity, sparking a farcical series of shoot-outs and plot twists in a brutal procession of pain, punctuated by sharp humor and clever dialogue that offers momentary salves between fatal wounds.
It’s easy to like a movie like this where the laughs fly just as fast as the bullets. Wheatley and his wife/co-writer Amy Jump have great comic sensibilities, but at times the jokes are a little too fast—either stepped on by audience reactions to the previous gag or drowned out by the next bit of action.
Luckily, they’ve got a very capable cast. Larson and Murphy do fine work as the film’s straight men, but it’s Copley who’s given the most ridiculousness to play with, though he doesn’t quite match the brilliance of his comedic work in The A-Team or Hardcore Henry—maybe that’s because his particular brand of scenery chewing works better when he’s surrounded by people who aren’t trying at all. His Vernon is the focal point of the film’s funniest lines, but he’s not Free Fire‘s MVP.
That honor belongs to a nearly unrecognizable Armie Hammer, playing against type with a well-groomed beard that gives him a professorial look that embodies a casually confident sardonic humor. While Copley is more of a ham, Hammer steals every moment he’s on screen. How a guy this good looking, talented and funny isn’t a huge movie star yet is baffling.
But beyond its considerable charms, there just isn’t much more to Free Fire. It’s a good-looking period piece with some attitude, but as an actioner, it’s oddly difficult to follow. Wheatley has always been an inconsistent visual stylist, but there’s something infuriating about a film set in one goddamn location that can’t cull together some spatial coherence. The staging and action geography leave a lot to be desired, making this feel like a hilarious play persistently interrupted by a middling crime thriller.
It would be easier to forgive Free Fire for not having much to say if it could at least fully deliver on its promise of pure entertainment. As it is, this will probably be more satisfying on Netflix than on the big screen.
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Free Fire
Directed by Ben Wheatley
Written by Ben Wheatley & Amy Jump
Starring Cillian Murphy, Brie Larson, Armie Hammer, Sharlto Copley and Michael Smiley
Rated R for strong violence, pervasive language, sexual references and drug use
90 minutes
Opens today at a theater near you.
