Skip to content
The Gunman stars Sean Penn in the lead role as action man Jim Terrier. He’s one of a number of men, involved in an operation far away, where they all did very bad things that they were bound to regret later in life, partly because it plays on their minds, but mostly because they end up getting bumped off one by one.
A bit of backstory however, as way down deep in the middle of the Congo, a hippo took an apricot, a guava and a mango. He stuck it with the others, and he danced a dainty tango. The rhino said, “I know, we’ll call it Um Bongo!”.
Now, if you’re unfamiliar with that drink from the ’80s, Um Bongo is a beverage and they drink it in the Congo. It’s blended in the following way: The python picked the passion fruit, the marmoset the mandarin, the parrot painted packets, that the whole caboodle landed in. So when it comes to sun and fun and goodness in the jungle, They all prefer the sunny funny one they call Um Bongo!
But no-one’s drinking Um Bongo in this film. In fact, it’s usually whisky. And in the Democratic Republic, there’s a bad guy who needs to be offed. Who’s the man to do it? Step forward our lead actor. Then, after doing a bunk for his own safety, we rejoin his life eight years later, having left behind his girlfriend Annie (Jasmine Trinca in the token crying-and-screaming-and-doing-nothing-else-girlfriend role) and best friend Felix (Javier Bardem), who both later hook up together which makes you wonder – was Felix so unable to find his own girlfriend that he has to make do with Jim’s sloppy seconds?
He ends up reconnecting with his old friends because he learns that out of the three men who were geared up to take the shot in the first scene, him being the selected one, the other two have since been taken out (off camera – booooo!) and now his life is on the line, so the stage is set for a stack of double-crossing and never knowing who you can trust.
However, why worry about trust when you can simply use your fists? Penn is impossibly beefed up in this film, and spends half the film with his shirt off in order to prove it. But then if you’re looking for a straight-forward and fun action film, The Gunman is the current one to go for. It’s great to see Penn in a lead role again, and it makes you think – why should Liam Neeson have all the fun in an action film like this? Sean Penn equips himself perfectly well, and I enjoyed it to the point that I’d like to have a sequel about the intervening years, perhaps meeting up with the then-present day, so it all crosses over.
Okay, so, like I’ve got across, you’re not watching this expecting Shakespeare, and if I had to change things, the first thing would be the name “Jim Terrier”. Terriers are little yappy dogs, so how about Jim Pitbull? Or, as he hops from location to location, Jim Littlest-Hobo? Nah, maybe not.
So, he starts off in the Congo, takes his shirt off, builds a gun, punches some people, kills some people; then he goes to London, where he takes his shirt off, doesn’t build a gun, but still punches some people in the face when he goes to meet Stanley (Ray Winstone) in a pub. Winstone plays against type by being a gruff-sounding Cockney and they talk in very hushed gravel-voiced tones, despite the fact they’d need to shout in order to hear themselves think while the rest of the customers are watching a football match on TV.
And then he goes to Barcelona, where he takes his shirt off, puts another gun together, punches some people, kills some people, and also finds time to visit Gibraltar… but it’s actually Barcelona doubling for Gibraltar. And he takes his shirt off, punches some people, and kills some other people.
Somehow, they all nip back to Barcelona onscreen – without telling us by way of the usual caption – which you can tell because of the bullfighting… unless that also goes on in Gibraltar. I don’t know, to be honest. We could’ve done with the film pausing at that point and then Judith Chalmers popping up to tell us the state of play in that country.
Oh, and Idris Elba also pops up as… well, his character name doesn’t really matter since he just plays it like John Luther in BBC’s Luther, which is by no means a bad thing, but I just envisaged him playing Luther and left it at that.
Go to page 2 for more thoughts on the film including my favourite moment!
The Gunman is a plot-by-numbers with lush locations and chiseled chests – for the men, that is, but when it comes to the women, the closest a flash we get is the token dizzy/crying girlfriend, Annie, from the back. Yes, women in modern action movies don’t have breasts. Or maybe they do, but they don’t get to show them onscreen.
And we’ve seen in films a million films where the girlfriend character is held hostage by the baddie, while the lead actor can only speak to them over the phone, from a distance, but in this I was hoping for Sean Penn to say to her, “Annie, are you ok? So, Annie are you ok. Are you ok, Annie. Annie, are you ok? So, Annie are you ok. Are you ok, Annie. Annie, are you ok? So, Annie are you ok? Are you ok, Annie? Annie, are you ok? So, Annie are you ok, are you ok Annie?” Yes, it’s that song where Michael Jackson asked Annie if she was okay. But he kept singing so much that we never found out how she was. Nearly 30 years on, I am still none the wiser.
Even if you miss a bit of exposition, you’re not really going to miss anything. The storyline won’t win any Oscars for Best Original Screenplay, but the most important thing is that it’s fun. It’s two hours of “check your brain at the door” fun, and it retains your interest for the full running time.
There’s also some daft dialogue, such as when Felix says to Jim, “You’re in Spain”, to which the straight-faced reply comes, “You’re in a swanky suit” (giggles all round)
If I had any complaints with The Gunman, it’s that some of the non-action scenes could do with tightening up, but the punching and shooting, to coin an obvious phrase, really packs a nice punch. It’s better than the director’s Taken, and it’s also good to know that unlike every one of the Liam Neeson franchise to date, The Gunman has NOT been censored for cinema release.
And after around 80 minutes, we get the pièce de résistance – a cameo from the wonderful Sarah Moyle (right) who shares a scene with Sean Penn and Mark Rylance, an old associate of Jim’s. Sarah plays Ruth, and I’ll say no more about her character, but fans of hers will know her best from BBC1’s excellent soap, Doctors, where she has done three tours of duty as receptionist Valerie in Letherbridge’s Mill Health Centre. So in a way, I’d love to think that her role in this film is really “What Valerie really did on her holidays” 😉
I’m still grinning from ear to ear after seeing her on the big screen – she was the reason why I went to see this one specifically in the cinema rather than waiting for the Blu-ray, but overall it’s a cracking piece of entertainment, and better than the Taken movies.
If any Hollywood directors are reading this, please hire Sarah for your next film, and catch up on her great work in Doctors. While this is a combination of drama and action, in Doctors she has awesome comic timing!
And if you were in London at the time of the cinema release, you could have seen her on stage in Pedro Almodóvar‘s Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown at the Playhouse Theatre, but the run ended on May 24th.
Oh, coincidentally, Barcelona is the place where everyone takes lunch at 2pm… just like The Mill Health Centre!
The film is presented in the original 2.35:1 widescreen theatrical ratio and is in 1080p high definition, and looks crisp and sharp in all of the locations, just as you’d expect for a modern movie release.
The sound is in not only 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, but also Dolby Atmos for those with the requisite equipment. Fighting and gunfire are dished out in equal measure and there’s nothing to disappoint in the audio department.
The extras are brief and are as follows but really do feel like an afterthought:
- Featurettes (7:43): On-set footage during filming looking at the Krav Maga form of combat, plus three others which just come across like extended trailers.
- Interviews (12:16): Three here, all fairly perfunctory – Mark Rylance, Ray Winstone and director Pierre Morel, but sadly not Sean Penn. They’re all Q&As where the Q is asked offscreen and appears as a caption. Oddly, the sound is heavily weighted to the left-hand speaker and that’s not a problem with my setup. In addition, Winstone sounds like either he has a heavy cold, or that he’s not quite feeling himself.
- Audio descriptive track: Does exactly what it says on the tin.
The menu features clips from the film set to a piece of the incidental music, and sadly there are some trailers before you get to this (please put them in the extras menu!) and, as such, I won’t be listing them here.
Subtitles are in English only and there’s a bog-standard 12 chapters throughout the 115-minute running time.
The Gunman is out on July 20th on Blu-ray and DVD, and click on the packshot for the full-size image.
|
FILM CONTENT PICTURE QUALITY SOUND QUALITY EXTRAS |
8 10 8 2 |
| OVERALL | 7 |
Cert: 
Running time: 115 minutes
Cat.no: OPTBD2661R0
Year: 2015
Released: July 20th 2015
Chapters: 12
Picture: 1080p High Definition
Sound: Dolby Atmos, 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, DTS 5.1, Dolby Digital 5.1
Languages: English
Subtitles: English
Widescreen: 2.35:1 (Anamorphic Panavision)
Disc Format: BD50
Director: Pierre Morel
Producers: Sean Penn, Andrew Rona and Joel Silver
Screenplay: Don MacPherson and Pete Travis (based on the novel, “The Prone Gunman” by Jean-Patrick Manchette)
Music: Marco Beltrami
Cast :
Jim Terrier: Sean Penn
Annie: Jasmine Trinca
Felix: Javier Bardem
Stanley Edgerton: Ray Winstone
Terry Cox: Mark Rylance
DuPont: Idris Elba
Reiniger: Peter Franzén
Reed: Billy Billingham
Bryson: Daniel Adegboyega
Eugene: Ade Oyefeso
Ruth: Sarah Moyle
Bullfighter: Alejandro Talavante
Camille: Rachel Lascar
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.
| 1 | 2 |