Free Fire Review

Free Fire

Director: Ben Wheatley
Starring: Brie Larson, Cillian Murphy, Armie Hammer, Sharlto Copley
Writer: Amy Jump and Ben Wheatley

A review by Insha Fitzpatrick

There’s something genuinely special about a movie that just aims at you and fires. Free Fire is that movie. An all out gunfeast of ten people firing on one another for an hour and twenty-five minutes. Free Fire asks a lot of questions. What’s the plot? Where is this going? Who hired who? Who can you trust? What’s the deal with them all? What the hell is happening?! But… you know what… who f*cking cares. Yes, my friends, it’s that kind of movie and I actually enjoy it without all of the cinematic gargen of making sense. Free Fire was just plain fun.

Free Fire tells the misadventures of a gun deal gone terribly wrong. On one side, we have Justine (Brie Larson), Chris (Cillian Murphy), Frank (Michael Smiley), Stevo (Sam Riley), Bernie (Enzo Cilenti) who provide the money for weapons supplied by Vernon (Sharlto Copley), Harry (Jack Reynor), Martin (Babou Ceesay), Gordon (Noah Taylor). Ord (Armie Hammer), is the middle partner of all of this, where he negotiates the deal between both parties, but with his nice fitting suit, can’t be trusted worth a damn. No one else can either as a matter of fact. The trouble starts when Chris, a member of the IRA (Irish Republican Army), says that the guns that he’s purchasing from Vernon and the boys are not what he ordered. It feels like something about to happen, but things don’t come to a head until Harry recognizes Stevo from the night before. Stevo bottled* Harry’s cousin after refusing his advances, which sets off a chain of unfortunate events after Harry pulls out a gun and shoots Stevo. Thus starts an entire movie of grown men (and a woman) shooting at each other.

(*bottled – broke a glass bottle over someone’s head.)

I know you might be thinking” ‘Why would I want to see something like that?’ Well, allow me to tell you things you should know before entering this movie. This film has little to no plot and don’t expect it to give itself over to one as you’re watching. The small plot I gave you above was basically your set up for the entire movie. Beyond that, you get little to no plot development until they start getting picked off one by one. You may think that’s bad, but quite the opposite! The film is about survival and not knowing who to truly trust. It was interesting to watch them figuring out who to trust, who not to trust, who double-crosses who, and everything in between. It was a very wild ride to place who’s on what side because you find yourself questioning it as well.

One thing I greatly appreciate about this movie is the guts of placing this film in one location throughout. Most movies can hit or miss with this, but Free Fire is the opposite. It continues to keep you engaged even with its quiet moments. Free Fire makes you pay attention, not only to where the bullets fly, but to the dialogue and the actions. It’s also hilarious that not many people walk throughout this movie. It’s kept low to the ground after so many shots to the leg. I’m not even joking. None of the actors are on their feet anymore halfway through the movie. They’re crawling throughout and it’s absolutely fantastic. Speaking of which…

The best part about this movie is the actors themselves. This is a character driven ensemble film with little to no character development until, perhaps, the end. You know what, I take that back. This film does have character development, but it’s slowly woven into the dialogue and you have to pay CLOSE attention to it. The characters are clever, attractive, grimy, gutter, skeevy, and all around kinda top tier oddball-ish. The dialogue we get is hilarious, especially the part of Frank and Ord teasing each other and anything that came out of Vernon’s mouth. I have to praise all of them for what they did throughout the movie.

If this wasn’t such a grand cast, I would have loved more focus on some of the characters. Again, some of their stuff is told through snippets of dialogue, but that’s where this movie lived and died. The large cast helped and hurt the flow of the film, because it’s hard to focus on just one person in a large ensemble film. There could have been more dialogue scattered throughout the time when bullets weren’t flying. If anything to humanize the characters (good or bad) instead of picking them off one by one.

The Verdict
SEE IT! Again, if you’re expecting a cinematic masterpiece thrown on screen, I don’t think you’re going to get it here. Free Fire is just so much fun without all of the expectations around it. It’s carefree, exciting, and super dope in its own creative way. It doesn’t play by any of the rules and that’s the best thing it can honestly do for itself. While most films will send you off with thoughts scrambling in your head, this film will send you off with thoughts of what you would have done in that situation. Not anything deep or poignant, but just enough to make you go “the f*ck did I just watch?”  But in a good way.

Side note: Sam Riley (Stevo) is such a great actor and if DC is looking to replace Jared Leto as the Joker, I highly suggest you give Sam Riley a call.