A sniper on a mercenary assassination team, kills the minister of mines of the Congo. Terrier's successful kill shot forces him into hiding. Returning to the Congo years later, he becomes the target of a hit squad himself.
Director:
Pierre MorelWriters:
Don MacPherson, Jean-Patrick Manchette (novel),1 more creditStars:
Sean Penn, Idris Elba, Jasmine Trinca |See full cast and crew
Storyline
A sniper on a mercenary assassination team, working for an unknown client, kills the minister of mines of the Congo. Terrier's (Sean Penn's) successful kill shot forces him to go into hiding to protect himself and the members of the team from retribution. This includes abruptly abandoning his girlfriend who has no idea what is going on. The assassination, paid for by a foreign mining company, triggers wide spread chaos and death in an already inflamed Congo. Terrier returns to the Congo years later working for an NGO, but eventually finds himself to be the target of a paid hit squad somehow connected to the ministers assassination. This leads to immediate deaths and the endangerment of the people working around him, and forces him back into hiding. In trying to discover who has put a price on his head, he begins to reconnect to the members of his old assassination team, including his old girlfriend. Always aware there is no path to redemption for his crimes, he is also periodically.
The Gunman Full Movies Review
Pierre Morel's "The Gunman" is such a menial cinematic actioneer that it isn't even worth existing.
Being that it's from the same guy who brought us "Taken" back in 2008, which at least had
occasional bouts of excitement and peril, it's amazing to see a film by him so sterile and feeble.
Worst of all, the film feels so much like a cut and paste effort to please studio executives with
another beginning-of-the-year action release, made up of odds and ends men in suits think we'd
like to see over what we'd actually like to see, that it's as if we're watching
a film nobody asked for.
One of the few positives of "The Gunman" is that it gives Liam Neeson time to take a hot bath
and lather his entire body with Icy Hot. Sean Penn, the latest candidate in this exhausting line
of aging action heroes proving they can keep up with guys half their age, steps up to the plate
here, playing Jim Terrier, an ex-soldier living in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Jim works
for a humanitarian organization, and, one day, creates civil unrest and turmoil by assassinating
a corrupt official for a foreign mining company. Following the event, we pick up eight years later
where Jim's wife (Jasmine Trinca) is now his ex-wife, married to his former coworker Felix
(Javier Bardem in perhaps his weakest role yet), his health is greatly deteriorating with chronic
headaches and fainting, and goons out to make him repay for his assassination in the Congo.
Penn is almost always the center of attention in "The Gunman," which is fine, as Penn has proved
through diverse roles he's capable of carrying a movie, but the talent on display here is really
cut short and given stupid, half-baked roles to fill. Bardem is laughable, as he spends some
of his desperately little screen time drugged out of his mind, Idris Elba shows up just when you
think the studios forgot to erase his name off the poster for less then eight minutes, and Ray
Winstone, who plays Terrier's longtime friend, isn't given enough time on screen either,
even though every time he appears he gives "The Gunman" some sort of life and drive.
Why pay the actors so much and give them prominence on the poster when they you give them
nothing to do and make their appearance nothing more than a glorified cameos? We're living
in an age that's beginning to disprove the power of the Hollywood star system, yet Hollywood
doesn't want to believe that.
Not to mention, the aging action hero concept is not only dying out, but it's getting to be an ugly
retread. "The Gunman," in a way, feels like a direct replica of the Kevin Costner aging action
hero vehicle "3 Days to Kill" that simmered in publicity before anyone got a chance to buy
a ticket (though it's one of the few of the genre very much worth seeing, more so than any
"Taken" installment). From the way Penn's character passes out and gets overcome with
headaches and dizziness and the state of denial his character lives in, "The Gunman" is very
much like the failed clone of that film. The main difference, however, is while the drama in
"The Gunman" feels like a nonsensical, love triangle convention, "3 Days to Kill" used its drama
as a route of humanization. The "aging action hero" concept has prevented the early retirements
and the wealth of endorsement possibilities for people like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester
Stallone, Liam Neeson, Kevin Costner, and now Sean Penn, as a means to make a living, but it's
a concept as worn as the joints on all those men.
I feel like erasing my entire review of "The Gunman" and replacing it with Leonard Maltin's review
of "Scooby Doo 2: Monster's Unleashed," which ranks as one of the shortest film reviews ever
written. "It is what it is," Maltin simply surmised on the film, an oversimplifying statement I try
my hardest to avoid in life and in writing, but here, it applies greatly. "The Gunman" is what you'd
expect: the acting is a collection of star-powered mediocrity, the action on display is surprisingly
gory, but wholly unsatisfying in the sterile way it is carried out, Frédéric Thoraval's editing is all
over the place, and the themes explored in the film are about as generic as the film's title.
Whether or not you'll enjoy it depends on how desperate you are to see violence, in which case,
I'm sure there's something on TNT later tonight that will serve your need for an adrenaline rush in
a much more effective way, and you won't have to pay any more than you already are to see it.
Being that it's from the same guy who brought us "Taken" back in 2008, which at least had
occasional bouts of excitement and peril, it's amazing to see a film by him so sterile and feeble.
Worst of all, the film feels so much like a cut and paste effort to please studio executives with
another beginning-of-the-year action release, made up of odds and ends men in suits think we'd
like to see over what we'd actually like to see, that it's as if we're watching
a film nobody asked for.
One of the few positives of "The Gunman" is that it gives Liam Neeson time to take a hot bath
and lather his entire body with Icy Hot. Sean Penn, the latest candidate in this exhausting line
of aging action heroes proving they can keep up with guys half their age, steps up to the plate
here, playing Jim Terrier, an ex-soldier living in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Jim works
for a humanitarian organization, and, one day, creates civil unrest and turmoil by assassinating
a corrupt official for a foreign mining company. Following the event, we pick up eight years later
where Jim's wife (Jasmine Trinca) is now his ex-wife, married to his former coworker Felix
(Javier Bardem in perhaps his weakest role yet), his health is greatly deteriorating with chronic
headaches and fainting, and goons out to make him repay for his assassination in the Congo.
Penn is almost always the center of attention in "The Gunman," which is fine, as Penn has proved
through diverse roles he's capable of carrying a movie, but the talent on display here is really
cut short and given stupid, half-baked roles to fill. Bardem is laughable, as he spends some
of his desperately little screen time drugged out of his mind, Idris Elba shows up just when you
think the studios forgot to erase his name off the poster for less then eight minutes, and Ray
Winstone, who plays Terrier's longtime friend, isn't given enough time on screen either,
even though every time he appears he gives "The Gunman" some sort of life and drive.
Why pay the actors so much and give them prominence on the poster when they you give them
nothing to do and make their appearance nothing more than a glorified cameos? We're living
in an age that's beginning to disprove the power of the Hollywood star system, yet Hollywood
doesn't want to believe that.
Not to mention, the aging action hero concept is not only dying out, but it's getting to be an ugly
retread. "The Gunman," in a way, feels like a direct replica of the Kevin Costner aging action
hero vehicle "3 Days to Kill" that simmered in publicity before anyone got a chance to buy
a ticket (though it's one of the few of the genre very much worth seeing, more so than any
"Taken" installment). From the way Penn's character passes out and gets overcome with
headaches and dizziness and the state of denial his character lives in, "The Gunman" is very
much like the failed clone of that film. The main difference, however, is while the drama in
"The Gunman" feels like a nonsensical, love triangle convention, "3 Days to Kill" used its drama
as a route of humanization. The "aging action hero" concept has prevented the early retirements
and the wealth of endorsement possibilities for people like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester
Stallone, Liam Neeson, Kevin Costner, and now Sean Penn, as a means to make a living, but it's
a concept as worn as the joints on all those men.
I feel like erasing my entire review of "The Gunman" and replacing it with Leonard Maltin's review
of "Scooby Doo 2: Monster's Unleashed," which ranks as one of the shortest film reviews ever
written. "It is what it is," Maltin simply surmised on the film, an oversimplifying statement I try
my hardest to avoid in life and in writing, but here, it applies greatly. "The Gunman" is what you'd
expect: the acting is a collection of star-powered mediocrity, the action on display is surprisingly
gory, but wholly unsatisfying in the sterile way it is carried out, Frédéric Thoraval's editing is all
over the place, and the themes explored in the film are about as generic as the film's title.
Whether or not you'll enjoy it depends on how desperate you are to see violence, in which case,
I'm sure there's something on TNT later tonight that will serve your need for an adrenaline rush in
a much more effective way, and you won't have to pay any more than you already are to see it.
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