Review: ‘The Gunman’

Sean Penn is all like, “hey, Liam Neeson can’t be getting ALL the tough old man parts, is he?” but he was also like “If I’m going to do an action movie, it has to be ABOUT something, amiright?” and that is how we have “The Gunman” which is about people’s sins coming back to haunt them and is also kind of about the pilfering of natural resources in Congo and how that was made worse by a civil war and political corruption and whatnot but mostly this is a movie about Sean Penn’s biceps.

Gunman (Penn) is doing some contract security work in Congo in 2006, which is really a cover for him being on some team of assassins, and a job he does forces him to leave the country, leaving behind the woman he apparently loved without giving her an explanation. Eight years later, some guys are trying to kill Gunman and he knows this is somehow connected to the Congo job, so he tries to find out who wants him dead and why, and this brings him back into the life of the woman he left behind. Complications and murders ensue.

Not only is this yet another entry into the tough old guy subgenre of action movies, it is directed by the guy who directed “Taken,” the film that really kick started this current trend of flicks that would have starred Charles Bronson in the 70’s and 80’s. And much like that movie and this fella’s other old man action movie “From Paris With Love” with a bald headed John Travolta, “The Gunman” is a reasonably watchable movie, with good actors slumming it in dumb action movies, although this time around this movie tries not to be so dumb.

Actually the whole Congo thing and the overly serious tone really seem to be the only thing that sets this movie apart from the others, and the only really admirable thing about it. It also completely sinks the movie because it is just SO damn serious about itself, the movie is no fun really at all, the action scenes aren’t fun, the Gunman isn’t a fun character because he’s guilt ridden and also suffering from severe head trauma and it’s just all kind of grim. And also with that whole Congo thing, about both sides of the civil war stoking the conflict so they could keep mining the minerals and resources to sell to Western countries, it feels like they WANT to say something with all this stuff but maybe they just didn’t know exactly what. Other than that all that stuff is, like, kind of bad, okay?

Everything else about this movie feels really uninspired. Actually it is kind of surprising that Penn chose this to be his first true action movie, or that Javier Bardem and Ray Winstone agreed to take time out of their lives to make this movie, because while it isn’t really bad, it isn’t really good either. The action is kind of boring, and the story is pretty thin. It also does not help that this is the kind of movie in which everything is telegraphed ahead of time so nothing is surprising when it happens. As a matter of fact, the most unique thing about this movie is how Javier Bardem has totally normal haircuts in this thing, he never goes blonde or awkward or ugly or spiky, he just has a couple of normal, cool looking haircuts. So strange.

“The Gunman” is the kind of movie you stumble across on HBO late one night, halfway through, and you just watch it because you are tired of changing channels and when it’s done you just shut off the television and go to bed and forget all about it. That’s the kind of movie we’re talking about here.