The Gunman ** (2015, Sean Penn, Javier Bardem, Ray Winstone, Mark Rylance, Idris Elba, Jasmine Trinca) – Movie Review

Sean Penn takes on the Liam Neeson role in this Euro-thriller from Pierre Morel, the director of Taken (2008). But Neeson doesn’t have to worry, he’s still the man.

Penn plays Jim Terrier, a mercenary assassination team sniper, who kills the minister of mines of the Congo, forcing him to go into hiding and abandon his girlfriend, doctor volunteer Annie (Jasmine Trinca). Returning to the Congo years later, he himself becomes the target of a hit squad, and goes on the run. Trying to discover who has put a price on his head, he begins to reconnect with the members of his old assassination team, and his old girlfriend.

Taken from Jean-Patrick Manchette‘s French crime novel, it is not a bad plot at all, really something a bit different with an intelligent feel to it. But Pete Travis’s pointlessly Europe-hopping screenplay is dour, dreary and downright disappointing, full of holes and clichés, and with a weak and silly climax in Barcelona that just has to include a predictable bullfight and a death by bullhorns you can see coming a mile off.

Penn looks very craggy in the huge close-ups on the IMAX screen which do him no favours. But he is impressive in the action, fighting and chase departments, with his muscled-up body and great running skills. Just as well he’s a proper, Oscar-winning actor too, as he has loads to do, the whole film to himself really.

Oscar-winning actor he may be, but Penn’s strengths don’t include the basic good guy charm that Neeson easily exudes. You are always on Neeson’s side, even when he’s gunning down roomfuls of bad guys, even when he’s torturing someone (in Taken). Not so with Penn. Neither he nor the film make you care whether he’s dead or alive. He’s a Bourne-style killing machine, but, there again, Matt Damon has effortless charisma.

The good guys and the bad guys Penn encounters are played by several excellent actors – Javier Bardem, Ray Winstone, Mark Rylance and Idris Elba. Not one of them is on his best form. Rylance is the least convincing of them as Cox, the leader of the team of four Congo assassins, who reappears in the present. But then Idris Elba, isn’t much good either, making a belated entrance as the boss of Interpol, who have Jim on their surveillance but still allow him to get on with his stuff.

Winstone does the Winstone turn and Bardem seems weary. Trinca shares little chemistry or screen time with Penn. Penn is far too taciturn for us to get his character or get on his side. Jim is an assassin working for a multinational corporation, hardly a hero or even a magnetic anti-hero. And he seems quite dim, taking ages to solve the simple puzzles of the plot. No one seems much involved, so we’re not either.

On the plus side, it tells a new story, it’s well shot and fast moving and the violent action is exciting.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Movie Review

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