Boston, 1973. Members of the IRA and an arms dealer come to an abandoned warehouse to make a deal to buy some machine guns. Everything is supposed to go smoothly until one member from the one group draws out a gun and shoots the other because of a previous incident. And all hell breaks.
Ben Wheatley's previous film, High Rise, I was not a fan of. High Rise felt too disturbing with heavy-handed messaging while lacking a coherent plot. Free Fire is by far a major improvement with hilarious dialogue, fun and well-written characters and non-stop action. I saw the movie at TIFF today and was pleasantly surprised. Wheatley turns this empty warehouse into a war zone with each of these character taking cover behind various objects and firing blindly. Unlike a lot of generic action movies where characters seem to magically dodge bullets, no one is safe and everyone eventually gets scraped or hit by bullets. This leads to some fun sequences of characters crawling on the ground to get from one cover to the next.
Surprisingly the two standouts are Cillian Murphy and Armie Hammer. Both were surprisingly funny in subtle ways. Sharlto Copley once again plays another weird but yet still hilarious and fun character. I also give strong shout-outs to Sam Riley and Jack Reynor. And Brie Larson is bad-ass as she holds her own weight against her male co- stars.
If I can say one negative it's that this isn't a movie with a lot of depth. It's not flat but don't expect this to be too much of a complex film. It is just simply about the these 2 trigger-happy groups trying either to kill or survive. It is more of a black comedy/thriller.
Free Fire is definitely one of the most fun and exciting action movies you will see so it is definitely worth a shot to watch once it releases in theatres.
