The Gunman

Dir: Pierre Morel

2015

**

Based on Jean-Patrick Manchette’s 1981 crime novel La position du tireur couche (The Prone Gunman), Pierre Morel’s adaption isn’t quite the noir thriller fans had expected. Manchette’s writing was influenced by the great crime thrillers of the nouvelle vague, Jean-Pierre Melville in particular. He was passionate about film and became a screenwriter, concentrating on noir fiction. He wrote for the screen and also translated English language novels into French before deciding to write novels with the idea that they would be adapted into film at some point. He wrote Nada (aka The Nada Gang) which was directed by the great Claude Chabrol, wrote for the cartoonist Jacques Tardi and famously translated Alan Moore’s Watchmen. 2015’s The Gunman was probably not the sort of thing he would have wanted his writing to be adapted into. It starts off well with a neo-noir style but quickly goes downhill when it concentrates with events ‘eight years later’ when the film becomes a forgettable and past its best lazy action thriller. I had no issue with Sean Penn as the main character as such but he didn’t bring anything particularly special to the film and nor did his impressive supporting cast. A film starring Penn, Idris Elbe, Ray Winstone, Mark Rylance and Javier Bardem should have been something special, an intelligent crime drama, action and brains. However, what director Morel and writers Don Macpherson, Pete Travis and Sean Penn have delivered is the most clichéd thriller of recent years. The characters are uninteresting and I couldn’t have cared less whether they lived or died. The romantic chemistry between Penn and Jasmine Trinca was about as unbelievable as it gets and Javier Bardem’s character was laughably simplistic. Ray Winstone has played this kind of character once too many, the lovable rouge with connections, there to lend a hand when our protagonist needs it. The updated story is messy and doesn’t really work. The advancement of technology is partly to blame but the correct alterations to the story are not made and I’m pretty sure spies and mercenaries don’t write down their addresses in their diaries. It’s all big names and very little story, the action sequences have all been done before and I imagine it will take a matter of weeks before I forget most of the film. Indeed, I had to ask my wife whether we’d already seen it after watching it for five minutes. I had to pause it, read through my reviews and the synopsis before realising that I hadn’t but the familiarity didn’t go away. The original story is great and I did like the updated idea, it just wasn’t executed particularly well. The main criticism the film received upon release was that Penn was too old for the role. I personally think that the actors were of a perfect age for the film to be believed given the timeline of events, their years were actually the least thing wrong with the production. The film offers nothing new and nothing interesting, it has been done many times before and many times better. Pierre Morel has also made better films, he and the main actors have all taken a huge step backwards that hasn’t done anyone’s resume of work any favours, so it is just as well that most people will forget that it even exists.