I’m not a Tarantino fan. While Reservoir Dogs (to name a move completely at random) was a great film, I did not like it. It’s not my genre. I tell you this for the sake of context – I’m not the correct person to watch or like a movie like Free Fire. So if at times during this review I come across as unduly critical or harsh, that’s probably only because Free Fire wasn’t a campy homoerotic sci-fi thriller/comedy (like if Magic Mike and Guardians of the Galaxy had a baby and it was also a musical)
The thing I appreciated most about Free Fire was the way the guns worked. That’s probably a good thing, there were a LOT of guns in this movie. It pains me when films have people who can, even while running and fighting, make perfect headshot after perfect headshot (*koff koff – John Wick). Guns don’t work that way. It’s hard to hit what you’re shooting at, even if you take your time to aim. And if one bullet hits you anywhere at all, it’s going to fuck you up. And you have to reload, which is not an instant thing. Without giving too much away, you get a sense of all that in Free Fire. Guns worked in a very believable way and that was very satisfying indeed.
There were some things I didn’t like. One was the fact that there were several times when nothing happened in the film but shooting. Yes, I was on the edge of my seat the whole goddamn time but still, there were long moments where I was patiently waiting (like some of the characters) for the bullets to run out. Also there were no shirtless handsome men. Like, none. I don’t know how they could have fit that into the plot exactly but it’s like they didn’t even try. And I wasn’t too taken with the ending. Mostly that’s because I didn’t really know who to root for, so I just kinda picked someone and I didn’t quite like how it turned out for them.
Rating: [star rating=”3.5″]