Free Fire. Short but not sweet.

I love a good film. And if a good film is short it's even better. There's an awful trend in movieland today for every big film to be padded and saggy. Film makers think the audience need everything spelled out to them. We don't. We like using our brains to connect the dots. And we all love a nice lean little film. 

Free Fire is a short film. And that's probably the best thing about it.

Director Ben Wheatley has made 6 films so far. 3 are excellent (Down Terrace, Kill List & A Field In England), 1 is great fun (Sightseers) and the last 2, one was an interesting failure (High Rise) and now one is an utter dud IMO (Free Fire).

The film has a very simple set up. Its 1978 and 2 IRA buyers meet gun sellers in a Boston warehouse to buy a cache of arms and everything goes sideways of course. The rest of the film is one big extended gunfight. Sounds fun though right? Its not. It's boring and eventually numbing.

It just feels like we've seen it all before. The Warehouse setting evokes Reservoir Dogs. The over cooked dialogue and smooth talking characters recall any number of films that popped up in the wake of Dogs and Pulp Fiction. The lines spouted don't feel real. One line about sympathy from the usually reliable Michael Smiley made me audibly groan. The characters are a motley crew of criminals, a mix of heroin addicts, scumbags and suavely suited gangsters, again recalling Tarantino's oeuvre. I wasn't a fan of any of them but Armie Hammer's character really annoyed me. He felt far too modern for the piece. From his one liners to his military stances and gunsmanship ( is that a word?), he just felt wrong right away.

I've a feeling i need to see this film again. It's getting such high praise i that i have to be wrong about it. Nothing clicked with me. I felt nothing for the characters. Nothing. I was so excited for this film and i had to force myself not to walk out after an hour. One scene involving a very slow moving vehicle and some horrible violence made me laugh only because annoying people died. An awful pity and a waste of a great cast that includes Smiley & Hammer, Cillian Murphy, Brie Larson, Sharlto Copley and Jack Reynor. Like seriously, there was 3 cracking Irish actors in there and an Oscar winning actress and i couldn't give a fuck about any of them. What is that all about? It has to be me. 

Ugh. Double ugh.