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You won’t see Sean Penn accepting an Oscar for The Gunman next year
CAt the age of 54, Sean Penn has apparently decided to follow in Liam Neeson‘s footsteps and become an aging, anguished action hero. Penn’s The Gunman is a film Neeson could easily have made, and it’s directed by Pierre Morel, who helmed Neeson’s first foray into this genre, Taken. It’s doubtful that Penn will fare as well as Neeson did, however, thanks in large part to a heavy-handed script.
Penn plays the title character in The Gunman, Jim Terrier, a former security contractor/covert op, While working in the Congo eight years earlier, Jim assassinated a government official on behalf of the mining concerns that hired his company. He has tried to make up for his past by working on humanitarian projects in the Congo, but now, he finds himself the target of a shadowy conspiracy determined to erase all record of the assassination plot. When Jim goes to Spain to get information from his former contact, Felix (Javier Bardem), he learns that Felix has married Jim’s old girlfriend Annie (Jasmine Trinca) and is working with the conspirators. Soon, Jim and Annie are reunited and on the run.
The Gunman could have been a solidly entertaining 90-minute thriller. Penn is in incredible shape (he appears shirtless on multiple occasions), and Morel stages the action scenes quite well. However, the script (which Penn co-wrote) is intent on hammering home its political points and dwelling on Jim’s need for atonement over and over. To make matters worse, Morel completely misuses Penn’s two most talented co-stars. Javier Bardem goes wildly overboard as Felix, although, to be fair, the character as written makes no sense whatsoever. Then, late in the movie, Idris Elba shows up as an Interpol agent whose only function is to tell Jim a ridiculous parable about building a treehouse. The result is a movie that gets sidetracked repeatedly when it should be building momentum. As an action film, The Gunman fires a few too many blanks to recommend.
Continue reading on The Gunman: Mini-Review
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