Before The Gunman
hit our screens, it was already dubbed “Sean Penn’s Taken” – we have the same director, the same grizzled-older-man-uses-past-lethal-skillset-to-hunt-find-and-kill-nefarious-types
lead character, and the same mentality that men are awesome and women are
pathetic. Of course, women are also lovely, because, as we see here and in
countless other misogynistic American films, the heroine spends her time in summer
dresses running around with children in playgrounds. Seriously? Another one?!
Anyway, The Gunman makes
Taken look Oscar-worthy by
comparison, so unbelievably poor is its premise, plot, execution and reveal. I
won’t go through the plot in detail, as The
Atlantic has that well and truly covered (seriously, read it!), but to give
you an idea of the audacity and stupidity of it all: Jim Terrier (Sean Penn) is
an ex-Mercenary working as a humanitarian aid worker in Africaaah, when some
local militia try and kill him. As they were looking for the ‘white man’,
Terrier somehow jumps to the assumption that some serious people have a hit out
on him, and he needs to delve back into his past to find out what happens. He
flies all over the world, and realises that Javier Bardem’s ridiculously hammy
friend who literally eye-humps Penn’s missus is part of the conspiracy. So are
some other guys who acted shady and sly throughout the film. Terrier, in a
tight, camp, black t-shirt, just moves from city to city, growling, tensing his
muscles and dispensing pain on everyone, because basically everyone has
betrayed him. (It’s worth noting here that the supporting cast is made up of
Mark Rylance, Javier Bardem, Idris Elba, and Ray Winstone – a stellar cast by
all accounts, yet utterly devoid of any good lines, interesting characters or
decent scenes. Everyone who appears in this film is devoid of credibility for 90 minutes or so.)
Like Sean Penn and his sanctimonious sermons about the third
world, poverty, and constantly sticking his big nose into problems a self-loving
millionaire actor from Hollywood couldn’t possibly grasp, Jim Terrier is also very
serious, and very arrogant. He’s so serious (and hard, in case you missed it) he
even beats up football hooligans in London pubs, and takes his shirt off maybe
ten times throughout the film: he answers the door shirtless, he showers at
every available opportunity, he goes surfing on his own at dawn (one of the
most hilarious interludes to a film I’ve ever seen), he sleeps with his missus,
he takes of his shirt again so he can stare at himself in the mirror, and of
course, he has to take his shirt off so his woman can stand naked at the window
with it billowing around her. It’s so utterly moronic. The repeated attempts to
remind the viewer that Penn is muscly, tough, serious, and conflicted, is
nothing short of laughable. In case you’re wondering, the answer is yes, Penn
did write the script.
I’ll leave it there at risk of exploding into a fit of
rants. The film is appalling, one of the worst I've ever seen. Taken and its star Liam Neeson had the
decency to keep some tongue in cheek, and Neeson was never short of heroic as he
brutally punished the human traffickers and gangs that occupied this world.
Sure, it was far from being a realistic crime thriller, but it was vigilante
action at its best, which has earned it cult status. Penn is not Neeson. He’s
not likable, and he’s far too self-aware to ever convince in this kind of
role. Desperately gripping youth in his dying clutches, with botoxed face,
floppy hair and a ridiculously overworked physique, Penn can not play the ‘geriatric
action hero’ film trope successfully played by Neeson, Willis, Eastwood, Stallone,
and Gibson. The Gunman is an embarrassing attempt for Penn to franchise himself as an action hero, a horrific misfire which seems to kill all the cast and crew as well. [1/5]
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