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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’re in London, you can also catch her on stage in Pedro Almodóvar‘s Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown at the Playhouse Theatre, which has had its run extended until at least May 2015.
Oh, coincidentally, Barcelona is the place where everyone takes lunch at 2pm… just like The Mill Health Centre!
Before signing off, I sometimes have a moan about the other customers in the particular screening I attended, and this time was no exception. I was in screen 14 of the Odeon at the Trafford Centre, and there was no problem with the presentation at Odeon’s end, but some customers really need a slap. Like some of the auditoriums, there are a few rows of seats at the front and then the main ones further back. I’ve sometimes taken to sitting at the back of the front section because it’s rare anyone else will want to do the same, and so you’re less likely to get bothered by idiots. This time, I was mistaken…
The front section of screen 14 is made up of five rows, but the fourth and fifth have a big hole in the middle to make way for wheelchairs, so both rows are made up of two small sections of 4 or 5 chairs apiece. So I sat at the back of the fifth row, as central as possible in the right-hand section. Fine. Then, as the adverts began, one man sat in the row in front, at the far end. Then, a few mins later, his mate joined him. And he sat RIGHT in front of me. And he had sticky-up-hair, so my once clear view was now obliterated by Pineapple Head!
The prat not only sat leaving two whole seat spaces between him and his mate, but also kept shifting about and since the chairs on the other side were free, then as the film began, I just moved across as I couldn’t be doing with it. A good choice, since I noticed he was continuing to shift about, then would move chairs to be next to his mate, talk to him for a bit and then go back to his original seat.
If this is the sort of thing that you do, then please have a word with yourself.
I see that from this Friday, The Gunman moves to screen 16 in that cinema, which is a smaller auditorium, but note that the screen ratios at the Trafford Centre Odeon are 1.85:1 for 12, 14 and 15, and 2.35:1 for all the rest up until 19, with screen 20 being the IMAX screen (although for me, it’s not a patch on the Manchester Printworks Odeon’s IMAX which is the second largest in Europe, after the BFI in London, but that’s something I’ve mentioned during IMAX movie reviews).
Anyhoo, I normally prefer to see a film in a 2.35:1 screen when it’s been filmed that way, but if it’s only showing on a 1.85:1 screen then that’s how you have to watch it, with the film still presented in 2.35:1 but, like at home on the telly, with black bars top and bottom. Sitting as close as I did, this isn’t really an issue, and in fact, even when a film is shown on the 2.35:1 screens, it’s still a 2.35:1 image in a 1.85:1 frame and, when the film begins, you can see the projectionist zooming it in to fill the screen, so are we losing some resolution there as a result? I need to investigate…
The Gunman is available to pre-order on Blu-ray and DVD. There is no release date for it, as I type. Amazon lists “December 31st”, but they always do that as an initial placeholder. Also, click on the poster for the full-size image.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 115 minutes
Studio: Studiocanal
Year: 2015
Format: 2.35:1 (Anamorphic Panavision)
Released: March 20th 2015
Rating: 8/10
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.
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