‘The Gunman’ Loves Nicotine More Than Non-Stop Action

The Gunman is like a conspiracy theorist who doesn’t have a sense of humor. He wholeheartedly believes in the BS that’s dribbling out of his mouth, and he offers it up in a way so serious that you dare not mock or ridicule it. All you can do is sit back and let the nut job talk… and talk … and talk. Oh, and smoke, too: this crazy person loves to drive the nails into his own coffin.

Initially, this misguided movie looked like an attempt by Oscar winner Sean Penn to take Liam Neeson’s place in the middle-aged ass-kicker subgenre of action films. Then you read the credits and see Penn’s name has been added as producer and co-writer. Suddenly, it all comes into focus.

The book upon which this is based, Jean-Patrick Manchette’s The Prone Gunman was released in 1981. The story deals with a hitman named Martin Terrier, who longs to get out of the racket and marry his childhood sweetheart. Suddenly, Penn inserts himself into the behind the scenes facets of the film and the screenplay turns into a diatribe on the corruption in the Congo, and how one man — our hero — is meant to pay for the crimes committed against it by the West.

You see, eight years previous, Terrier (Penn, looking buff and bronzed) was working covertly in the region, helping European and American investors recoup as much of their investment as they can while keeping their raping of natural resources hush-hush. Along with his pal Cox (Mark Rylance) and overseer Felix (Javier Bardem), they assassinate the Minister in charge of challenging big business, resulting in chaos. Terrier quickly leave the area, abandoning his girlfriend Annie (Jasmine Trinca) without so much as a goodbye.

Fast forward to today and our lead is back in the region, trying to help out. When he is attacked, he senses his past sins coming back to haunt him. He reconnects with Cox and Felix, and soon discovers that someone is trying to cover up the crime, and the only way to do that is to eliminate everyone involved. Cue the country-hopping as flights to London and Spain leads to Felix and Annie as a married couple, more conflicting clues, and at least one moment where our hero actually keeps his shirt on.

Let’s get this out of the way right up front: Hollywood has done a heck of a job eliminating cigarettes from the mainstream movie’s go-to character move. A decade ago, everyone was lighting up. Now, with the threat of an “R” rating hanging over its head and goodwill PR being generated by studios who take a stand (like Disney, who is saying “no more” to smoking in its films), it’s rare to see someone puffing away. It’s like witnessing a ritual from a foreign country. Sure, Terrier might enjoy a pack or two, but Penn smokes so much in The Gunman you wonder if it’s possible to suffer from the dangers of cinematic secondhand smoke.

Chain smoking seems to be the main subtext of The Gunman. This is an action movie where the action is frequently halted so that Penn can prance through his favorite brand’s particularly potent flavor country. Put another way, you can take Salem out of the actor, but the actor will not allow you, under penalty of pouting, to take the Salem out of him. The obsession with smoking is just the beginning of the problems with this below-average adventure. We never really understand the motives involved, why Terrier and his men have to be eliminated, and why Taken director Pierre Morel’s quick-cutting handheld camera approach to mayhem is shuttled to the side to that Penn can pontificate.

If you know the actor, you understand his stern political activism. He’s not above causing controversy for the sake of his beliefs. He’s also not beyond sinking the main selling point of his first foray into this kind of commercial filmmaking in order to make his points. With the help of multiple news montages and a few carefully crafted conversations, Penn proves what anyone with at least a modicum of world news interest knows: the Congo is one corrupt place. What this movie is supposed to do about it, except shine a light on the situation, remains the actor’s own private mystery.

Now, if the action was exceptional, if it came even close to matching movies like Fast and Furious 6 or Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol, we’d forgive the forays into foreign policy. We’d patiently sit while Penn delivered his speeches, then giggle as the next amazing stunt showcase played out before our eyes. But Morel is from the Luc Besson school of confused chaos; it’s an ideal that believes an audience member should be involved in the action, not just a mere witness to it. As a result, we are distanced from the main purpose behind the movie. If we can’t thoroughly enjoy the genre’s main trapping, we are left with the ancillary stuff, and it’s not very good.

Penn plays things uber-serious, trying to sell his wounded warrior shtick with a scowl and a smoke. He’s pumped up (he’s got quite the biceps for a 55 year old) and handles the pre-stuntman sequences with ease. But we don’t care about Terrier. We don’t care about his past. We don’t care about Annie. We don’t care about retribution. All we want is some good clean (violent) escapist fun, and in that regard, Penn is clearly no Neeson. The Irish idol “gets” why his action films are successful. Our lead here is just pretending. The Gunman may have seemed like a good idea on paper. As it plays out, said promises produce nothing more than a smoke screen.