‘Free Fire’ shoots for entertaining insanity
It features non-stop bullets, f-bombs and Brie Larson eye rolls
Free Fire is the world’s greatest 90-minute PSA for gun control.
Not that director Ben Wheatley’s hyperviolent, highly watchable action comedy
out of four; rated R; now showing) is politically charged, mind you. It’s just a combustible situation with non-stop bullets, f-bombs and Brie Larson eye rolls that showcases the potential disaster of giving firearms to a bunch of complete idiots.
Setting it in 1970s Boston lets Wheatley give Free Fire a grimy, worn vibe, a la Dog Day Afternoon or Dirty Harry. Chris (Cillian Murphy) and Frank (Michael Smiley) are stoic IRA lads who arrive at a warehouse to buy some guns for their cause, Vernon (Sharlto Copley) is the porn’stached peacock of an arms dealer, and Ord (Armie Hammer) and Justine (Larson) are the thirdparty go-betweens there to make sure the deal goes down smoothly.
It doesn’t. At all. The tense atmosphere, already close to ignition when the wrong type of guns are brought to the meet-up, turns deadly when a prior beef between low-level lieutenants on either side leads to shots fired. Everyone scrambles to survive the indoor encounter, and an already-crazy night gets nuttier when another mysterious bunch makes itself known with unseen snipers above the contentious fray.
While not as impressive as Wheatley’s best works — the brilliantly twisty Kill List and ambitiously dystopian High-Rise — Free Fire is a fun romp for those missing a little Quentin Tarantino-style insanity. There’s a Looney Tunes sense of action, with ammunition flying every which way, characters turning on each other and, by the end, everyone submitting to Justine’s mantra: “In it for myself.” Still, there are a few emotional moments that balance the silliness.
There’s not much characterization, but all you need to know about the disparate personalities comes out in the firefight, and the script gives the actors plenty of zingers to toss like grenades. When he’s asked to stand down, Vernon embraces goofy defiance (“It’s too late, I’ve been insulted”), and Ord’s calm and collected nature devolves into sheer panic before reaching wounded acceptance. “I’m not dead, I’m just regrouping,” he croaks in Monty Python-esque deadpan.
Much of the cast is there to wear vintage sunglasses and beards, though Hammer and Murphy are both solid in their roles. Of them all, Copley is the biggest hoot as the unhinged Vernon, a misogynistic, too-cool-for-school dude who’s just begging for comeuppance. And Larson gives a definite feminist sparkle to Justine, who doesn’t take Vernon’s comments about putting on “a bit of weight” without an acidic comeback and death glare. She’s by far the smartest one in the room, which isn’t saying much with the rampant buffoonery around her.
Wheatley finds remarkable ways to use oddball elements to boost his wild comedic gun show: John Denver’s sweet Annie’s Song is tossed with the most un-innocent of confrontations, gunfire acts as the exclamation point to many rounds of clever rat-a-tat dialogue, and the Free Fire players become an impromptu encounter group while trying not to die in a ballistic blaze of glory.