K-SCORE: 54
Director: Ben Wheatley
Writer: Ben Wheatley, Amy Jump
Starring: Sharlto Copley, Armie Hammer, Brie Larson, Cillian Murphy, Jack Reynor, Babou Ceesay, Enzo Cilenti, Sam Riley, Michael Smiley, Noah Taylor
“so much time crawling”
Spoiler Level: Minor
Ha! I have a very rare complaint at the heart of my criticism for this film: desperately needs establishing shots! It’s an uncommon enough problem that I’m giddy with excitement just at the opportunity to use it. Come on Wheatley! Where’s your establishing shots, bro?
“the whole film hinges on needing to have an understanding of where the characters are in the warehouse”
Free Fire is a semi-real time crime action film about an arms deal in a warehouse gone wrong because of a dispute involving a sexually molested cousin that serves as a catalyst for a long and devastating shootout. I have no problem at all with the premise. I was okay with the characters too. They’re interesting enough, well acted. And it’s not like this is the most challenging of films to make being as it has a single set and no narrative gaps to gracefully leap over. But still, the director failed to pull it off. The main reason for this is that the whole film hinges on needing to have an understanding of where the characters are in the warehouse, who has shot whom, sightlines, and destinations. But there are almost no establishing shots to give you the overall picture. Money team here, guns team here - no. Nothing of the sort. There’s a single set for the movie and I felt that if I were plopped in that set by the end, I wouldn’t even know how to get around, nor would I be able to point out where certain characters died with any degree of accuracy. It’s a real shame. It comes at such a cost that basically none of the action is cool and the dark humor is lost because you can’t track the comotion properly.
The other issue is that all the characters spend so much time crawling and hobbling around that it feels like they’re all on an equal plane and it’s dull to watch after thirty minutes or so. They needed variance. Some needed to have avoided being shot entirely and ran around the warehouse freely. Some needed to die right away. Some needed to be completely immobilized. Some needed to be mobile for a bit and then bleed out. Some could crawl. Others could have applied some field triage and then gotten back into the fight. But it’s not the direction they go with. Everybody takes a not-quite-fatal leg or stomach wound and limps between cover points while shouting insults and questions at each other.
If the film had had a much better director and editor, maybe I could have cared about the details of the arms deal and the subtleties of the characters. But it didn’t and so I have to toss this one in the “mostly trash” pile.