Free Fire (2017)
Directed by Ben Wheatley
Set in Boston in 1978, a meeting in a deserted warehouse between two gangs turns into a shoot-out and a game of survival.
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The cheeky dialogue and relentless violence leans heavily on the influences of Sam Peckinpah and “Reservoir Dogs,” although in this case the comic mayhem of the protracted battle amounts to little more than a lengthy gimmick.
Suggesting a feature-length adaptation of Reservoir Dogs‘s finale, Free Fire is like so many mid-‘90s Tarantino knockoffs, all self-consciously witty dialogue meant to paper over gratuitous violence with a veneer of nonchalance and a gimmicky setup.
Indeed, this battle royale-with-cheese shares a strikingly similar tone and setting to Reservoir Dogs.
Comparisons to Reservoir Dogs are probably inevitable given the warehouse setting, copious firearms and endlessly quotable script, but this is a sleeker and more violent film (though perhaps less sadistic).
A virtuoso feat of indiscriminate gunplay from director Ben Wheatley — who is, without a doubt, the most exciting thing to hit British genre cinema since Guy Ritchie, minus the latter’s eagerness to sell out — this almost cartoonishly over-the-top action movie crosses the irreverent cheekiness of Quentin Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs” with the ruthless spirit of 1970s B-movies, in which audiences hoped for a few minutes of what “Free Fire” sustains for the better part of 90 minutes.
This is low-brow Reservoir Dogs, extreme genre action meant to energize you with an insane cast of characters hell-bent on killing each other on principle.
It also sports more gunfire than John Woo’s The Killer and Hard Boiled combined.
When a van rolls in blasting our John Denver and an earlier, off-screen altercation involving Irish hireling Stevo (a feral Sam Riley) sets off a chaotic gun battle, the warehouse trapping these motley crews of distrustful, richly quotable criminals inevitably recalls Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs , as that film drew on Kubrick’s The Killing .
Staged inside an enclosed space for the most part, “Free Fire” is a variation on a theme of John Carpenter’s 1970s-era grind house landmark “Assault on Precinct 13” with a grungy, “Mean Streets,” raw-boned feel and some truly Scorsese-like moments of gang-movie ultra-violence.
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Setting it in 1970s Boston lets Wheatley give Free Fire a grimy, worn vibe, a la Dog Day Afternoon or Dirty Harry .
Staged inside an enclosed space for the most part, “Free Fire” is a variation on a theme of John Carpenter’s 1970s-era grind house landmark “Assault on Precinct 13” with a grungy, “Mean Streets,” raw-boned feel and some truly Scorsese-like moments of gang-movie ultra-violence.
Ben Wheatley's latest is Reservoir Dogs meets Smokin’ Aces minus any and all narrative ambition.
"The Boondock Saints," " Reindeer Games ," " Phoenix ," "Truth or Consequences, New Mexico," " Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead ," "2 Days in the Valley," "American Strays," " The Way of the Gun ," "Suicide Kings," "8 Heads in a Duffel Bag"—I could go on, but then we'd be here all day, and I'd never get around to talking about Ben Wheatley's "Free Fire," a Tarantinoid film that arrives just in time to mark the 25th anniversary of "Reservoir Dogs," which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival back in 1992.
But if the film has only one note to play, it plays it with a certain slapstick panache, landing closer to Reservoir Dogs than The Boondock Saints on the quality spectrum of movies about loquacious lowlifes with itchy trigger fingers.
The Max Fischer Players came to mind more than once, as did The Boondock Saints , along with every other crummy genre exercise that made me stop renting movies with pistols prominently featured on the video box during the Clinton administration.
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