FREE FIRE (2017) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

FREE FIRE (2017) movie

Genre              |  Crime Thriller

Classification   |   MA 15+

Running time   |   91 minutes

Released         |   27 April 2017

cast

Brie Larson ... Justine
Cillian Murphy ... Chris
Michael Smiley ... Frank
Armie Hammer ... Ord
Sharlto Copley ... Vernon
Sam Riley ... Stevo
​Enzo Cilenti ... Bernie
Babou Ceesay ... Martin
Noah Taylor ... Gordon
Patrick Bergin ... Howie

director

Ben Wheatley

writer

​Amy Jump ... (screenplay by) &
Ben Wheatley ... (screenplay by)

cinematographer

​Laurie Rose

music

​Geoff Barrow ... (music by)
Ben Salisbury ... (music by)

film editor

​Amy Jump ... (edited by)
Ben Wheatley ... (edited by)

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box office result

Worldwide             $​1,799,312

Australia                 $​​​​​​​​​14,048

North America       $​​1,799,312 ​

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the best dialogue

Vernon: Justine... How are you, doll?
[plants a kiss on her hand]
Vernon: As gorgeous as ever! Well you've uh put on a bit of weight. Did someone impregnate you?
Justine: [calmly] Fuck off.
Vernon: Good, there is still a chance.
Stevo: What the fuck is that accent?

Harry: Hey, I like your cardboard armor.
Vernon: It's protection from infection.

Stevo: FYI your breath stinks of shit and you have a serious case of BO!

FREE FIRE (2017) MOVIE IMAGES

Images

Posters

Images

Posters

FREE FIRE (2017) STORY SYNOPSIS

​​When a black-market arms deal goes outrageously wrong, Justine finds herself caught in the crossfire, forced to navigate through a warehouse full of trigger-happy madmen who are all hanging on for dear life.

FREE FIRE (2017) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty   |   Review date 19 April 2017
​Pop Movee Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐½

Ben Wheatley grows with each film he makes; but viewers who have been exposed to his previous works may have developed a prejudice against what he has presented moviegoers to date. KILL LIST (2011), SIGHTSEERS (2012), A FIELD IN ENGLAND (2013) and HIGH-RISE (2015) have seen Wheatley shift over the last half-a-decade from his English television background to become a full-fledged, international filmmaker, but they have not been to everyone’s taste.

His latest offering, the aptly named FREE FIRE, represents another step forward in his journey, proving that attracting on-screen talent to his projects is no fluke (as he did with Tom Hiddleston & Jeremy Irons in HIGH-RISE) and he is capable of making a feature film that carries his trademark flourish of ultra-violence that is also accessible to a broad audience. While not the same kind of film maker as Quentin Tarantino, it’s easy to see how FREE FIRE has drawn comparisons on the film festival circuit to RESERVOIR DOGS when it hit back in 1992.

Don’t be fooled though, FREE FIRE is its own special thing.

Wheatley opts to make his film a period piece, albeit set in 1978. The gap of almost forty years between the here and now and the film’s setting, allows Wheatley to create a distinctive story, with a unique kind of dialogue that taps into the death-throes of America’s Disco era with the flares and wide collars to match. The film takes place in Boston and provides justification for its strong Irish presence, with Cillian Murphy’s Chris and Michael Smiley’s Frank playing two mercenaries from Emerald Isle seeking to secure a stash of semi-automatic weapons for their IRA comrades back home.

The significance of the politics may be lost on younger members of the audience, and hard to imagine in 2017, but it was during the 1970s that the IRA were considered terrorists and openly hunted by the British government and its agencies. Their desire for arms to fight the British was very real. In the case of Free Fire, Sharlto Copley’s Vernon is the man with the guns, while Brie Larson and Armie Hammer play Justine and Ord, two American intermediaries who have brought all of the interested parties together in a deserted Boston dockyard warehouse. 

Just imagine for a moment, the potential. Fiery Irishmen, a mad South African, two Americans who believe it’s their right to bare arms and an eclectic group of muscle all itching to take each other out at the first sign of trouble. Wheatley and his co-writer Amy Jump (who also happens to be Wheatley’s wife) provide exactly what the audience expect, pitting Sam Riley’s half-smart Stevo against Jack Reynor’s Harry.

Unseen, but discussed in the film’s opening scene, is Frank’s insistence upon finding out how Stevo has managed to get a cracking black eye and a cheek that looks more or less fractured. The answer doesn’t come immediately, but when it does, FREE FIRE lives up to its title. The remainder of the movie becomes a game of cat and mouse to see who can shoot the straightest, use the least amount of bullets and kill the most bad guys. The great Catch-22 of FREE FIRE is that everyone’s simultaneously both a Good Guy and a Bad Guy!

FREE FIRE is great entertainment. It may be a little too violent for some, but Wheatley reigns in his penchant for the gratuitous stuff just enough to make this his best film to date. (That’s coming from someone who has loved Kill List for a long time!) The on-screen performances are all fantastic and Sharlto Copley proves, yet again, just how much range he has as one of international cinema’s great character actors. Vernon makes outrageous comments every other sentence and his preening about his high-fashion suit is ridiculous but he’s provides a focus for the story that allows all the other actors include the highly-talented Murphy, Brie Larson and Armie Hammer to play off and make their own performances seem like method acting by comparison.

Don’t be afraid of the title.

Don’t be afraid of the violence.

There’s a lot of dark comedy to be found in FREE FIRE and it’s definitely worth putting a round in the chamber, pulling the trigger to find out what happens next!

FREE FIRE MOVIE (2017) USEFUL LINKS

​Free Fire (2016) - IMDb
​Free Fire - Wikipedia
​Free Fire (2017) - Rotten Tomatoes

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