The Gunrunner

My review was written in June 1989 after watching the film on New World video cassette.

Before playing Eliot Ness in "The Untouchables" Kevin Costner starred in this unreleased Canadian pic as a Montreal good-guy gangster. Video debut six years after has weak prospects since it's a very dull show.

In an otherwise Canadian cast, Costner toplines as Tod Beaubien, returning hotm to Montreal from China in 1926 to become embroiled in local politics, class struggles and family infighting. Boring plotline has him ultimately launching a one-man vendetta against corruption, with anticlimax that his gunrunning is actually on the side of the angels, to back a revolution in China.

For Costner fans, pic would have been more interesting if he played a baddie to contrast with his recent all-American hero stardom. Instead, he's laid-back, self-assured and stuck in an almost actionles vehicle that plays like a subpar telefilm. Sara Botsford brightens things up a bit as a villainous gambling club operator, but her sex scene with Costner is extremely tame.

Tech credits are chintzy, with variable sound recording.

Costner returns to his home in 1927 Montreal from China to buy guns to use there because of the murder of his doctor girlfriend. The movie is about his efforts to find a source of guns to smuggle to China and raise enough money to purchase the guns from criminal elements in Prohibition era Quebec. Smuggling Canadian booze to the completely dry U. S. dominated much of the criminal activity. Costner and his brother attempt to make money smuggling booze into the U. S. Costner's brother is killed. The police are corrupt and there is a nasty corrupt policeman to make that point. It is a slow low budget production where the makers did a good job. You can see Costner before the days of Tig Productions. The movie is worth a watch and you can see hints of what the future holds for Kevin. If you have an attention span greater than a goldfish you will recognize the the movie spins a pretty good yarn on a budget. I rate the movie 5.5 stars rounded to a 6.

I picked this up on DVD for $4, because I knew I could trade it one-for-one at a used book store. It was well worth the investment.

There are some problems with this movie. It's melodramatic for one. It has some cornball dialogue. It's just a little cheesy.

The story has big romantic moments, but no big romantic leads. The woman could be Kevin Costner's mom, and he wasn't the leading man women knew him as a few years ago. Despite many sexy locations and moments, this film is asexual.

In a way, The Gunrunner takes place in the naive, simple 1920s one might imagine after only having seen bad movie versions of the time. It's a really interesting world. I see this movie as a gangster-themed steampunk version of No Way Out (1987). I mean, what other movie hero helps start the Chinese Revolution? I was taken to a different place, and I didn't lose my suspension of disbelief along the way. Only afterwards do I admit that it wasn't so great. At the time, I was loving it.

It reminds me a lot of The Boy in Blue (1986). It's always good to see rare movies like this, and it's definitely worth the price of a rental.

This Canadian production was completed in 1984, but held back from release. During the next few years, its star, Kevin Costner, became a superstar, but the movie still wasn't released. It took a few more years before the movie was finally released, being dumped straight to video. Watching the movie, it becomes clear pretty soon why no one was gung ho about releasing the movie. For a cheapie, the production values replicating 1920s Montreal are generally adequate, though a few scenes looks slightly skimpy. And the movie has the novelty of being about a communist hero. Though considering how brutal communist governments have been through history, it's kind of hard to root for this hero, especially since it's hard to get an idea of his various thoughts and feelings about many things. This may explain why Kevin Costner gives a very bland and colorless performance, having nothing to work with. The biggest problems about the movie, however, are that it's both incredibly slow and extremely boring. Most viewers will probably fall asleep before it reaches the end. Even fans of Costner (if there are any left at this point) would best leave this movie unwatched.

Quite an interesting film indeed, very smoothly directed and easily played without ruining it by too much talking. The only thing I couldn't help thinking all the time was, that this looked as if it was a film by Alan Rudolph and even Costner and his way of acting looked a lot as if the director had intended to cast Keith Carradine instead. Even the soundtrack seems to imitate Mark Isham and if you close your eyes, it's sometimes hard not to be perplexed by the closeness to "Choose Me" or perhaps "The Moderns" - by the mood, not the story! The most surprising thing is, that the movie works, though. In fact, this is one of the best screen appearances of Costner I've seen, at least because he avoids the usual grinning and concentrates on the driven and melancholy character.