The Gunman

For director Pierre Morel, helmer of Taken, From Paris with Love and now The Gunman, to be an American overseas is to flirt with trouble. In three consecutive features, he has thrust U.S. citizens abroad into situations of considerable violence. Europe is the frequent playground of the French filmmaker, his characters running around picturesque locales as they wreak havoc and avoid capture. His latest movie may also journey to the Democratic Republic of Congo; however, detour aside, his favoured formula remains in tact.

Here, the titular, trigger-happy figure is Jim Terrier (Sean Penn, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty) – or, he was eight years ago. After an incident forced the ex-mercenary to leave his girlfriend, Annie (Jasmine Trinca, Saint Laurent), without a word, he has laid low and turned to legitimate enterprise as more than just a cover. Then his past comes calling, courtesy of killers on his trail looking to punish his previous deeds. With the assistance of his old pal Stanley (Ray Winstone, Noah), Terrier must trawl through his former colleagues – including still-active company man Cox (Mark Rylance, TV’s Wolf Hall) and reformed associate turned business mogul Felix (Javier Bardem, The Counselor) – to get to his pursuers before they get him first.

Though based on Jean-Patrick Manchette’s 1981 crime novel The Prone Gunman, Morel’s film is more concerned with adhering to bland genre type that adapting its source material. The Gunman looks and feels exactly as expected, right down to the slick shots of confrontation and tensely edited bullfighting climax that prove the director is also in familiar territory, technique-wise. It’s a smooth affair, but a shallow, by-the-numbers one too. Even the premise, skirting around developing world, anti-capitalism politics, is notable only for affording the feature a source of difference from the rest of the filmmaker’s output.

Thank goodness for the ever-consistent presence of Penn, not for his contributions co-producing and co-writing the screenplay with Don MacPherson (Fleming) and Pete Travis (director of 2012’s Dredd), but for his unwavering seriousness. As his aptly named Terrier scampers through what proves to be Morel’s standard servings of city-hopping shootouts, explosions and standoffs, he at least adds solemnity to the action – when he’s not inexplicably shirtless, that is. In tone, the movie matches his mood beat by beat. Grounded by his efforts, The Gunman never overtly veers into laughable territory in its monotonous assembly of brooding looks and brutal fights, only into been-there, seen-that tedium.

Instead, the silliness is left to the machinations of the script rather than the way the story plays out on screen, via a fondness for one too many complicating factors. A love triangle becomes the real focus, a lingering head injury pops up whenever the film’s hero needs a reason to slow down and prolong the drama, and the late entry of Idris Elba (Luthor) both inserts another layer of convenience and wastes his charismatic talents. In that same vein, Bardem caters to the ludicrousness of every predictable plot point in a performance that paints neither him nor the feature in a positive light. If Penn spends his time trying to invest the movie with gravitas amidst his running around London, Barcelona and Gibraltar, his on-screen rival keeps dragging the movie down to the level of a throwaway actioner of the week, which is where The Gunman awkwardly, ultimately settles.

Rating: 2 stars out of 5

The Gunman
Director: Pierre Morel

Spain / UK / France, 2015, 115 mins

Release date: April 16

Distributor: StudioCanal

Rated: MA