The Gunman

Sean Penn seldom makes a movie, so what possessed him to do The Gunman?  More precisely, what possessed him to also co-produce and co-write it?  This is a lethargic, haphazard and derivative thriller that generates no interest in its plot or characters.  It seems to exist simply as a vanity project for Penn, and an opportunity to show off his chiseled 54-year-old body at every opportunity.

This is not an escapist or fun action movie.  It's dire, depressing and gory.  I have no problem with an action movie wanting to take itself seriously, but it often helps if you give a damn about the people who are getting their heads blown off, or gored on the horns of a bull.  Nobody in this movie gets to create anything resembling a real person.  They're too busy looking tortured, sad and miserable before they wind up brutally murdered.  The film kicks off with Penn playing Jim Terrier, who at first seems to be a NGO security consultant in the Congo enjoying a fling with a pretty young doctor named Annie (Jasmine Trinca).  Turns out Jim is leading a double life, as he and his other friends who work alongside him are secretly hired killers working for evil mining corporations that want their opposition dead.  Jim pulls off an assassination, and then must flee the Congo without telling Annie why, or the truth about himself.

Flash forward eight years later, and we find Jim back in the Congo trying to repent for his past sins by working as an aid and digging wells for poor villagers.  That's when some hitmen show up and attempt to kill him.  He gets them first, but he quickly realizes that someone from his past is trying to silence him.  Looking for answers, Jim must reunite with some of his former partners, and a variety of shadowy individuals, who are played by the likes of Javier Bardem, Idris Elba, Ray Winstone and Mark Rylance.  He is also reunited with Alice (who is now married to Bardem's character), and attempts to rekindle things while he's running around, killing the people who are trying to kill him.  All this, and he also has to deal with a dangerous brain condition that seems to be slowly killing him.

The Gunman is long and dragged out, with lengthy stretches where nothing much happens.  There are also quite a lot of scenes that require Penn to take off his shirt, or show off his arms, just so he can show us how in shape he is for his age.  A still photo of Penn in a magazine would have the same effect.  We don't need this movie to show us that.  It's not that I don't understand the appeal it would have for Penn to reinvent himself as an action star at this point in his career, similar to what Liam Neeson did with the original Taken.  In fact, Penn even hired the director of that movie to direct this one.  But the reason why Taken worked with most audiences is that the movie did a good job of showing Neeson as someone not to mess with.  This movie paints Penn's character as being so bland and personality-deprived, we just don't care.

The action sequences, which should be the highlight, are also instantly forgettable, and look like a lot of the stuff we saw in the Bourne films.  So, what does that leave us with?  Not much, I'm afraid.  The characters are written at the most basic level, and not even the romantic relationship between Penn and Trinca generates much heat.  No matter how the movie forces them together and tries to convince us they're a hot item, the chemistry remains at bay.  This is a flaccid movie all around, with nothing that grabs our attention.  I have no problem with Penn wanting to do something that makes him out to be an action star, but why this one?  He must get better scripts than this every day.  What drove him to this particular project?

I will never know the answer, obviously, so I will just chalk The Gunman up as a momentary lapse of logic on his part, and hope that he's a bit more choosy with what he gets involved in next time.  I'm sure he has much more interesting projects lined up in the future, and I'm also sure this will become a curious footnote in a continuing career before too long.

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