The Gunman

Taking the lead protagonist role for a change instead of playing the villain (as in Gangster Squad) or a peripheral enigma (see The Secret Life of Walter Mitty or The Tree of Life), Sean Penn stars as a reformed hit man seeking redemption in the trite action film The Gunman. Pierre Morel (Taken) may be in the director's chair, but Penn has credits as a co-screenwriter and producer, and ultimately this feels like a vanity project designed to do for Penn's bankability, Africa, Spain and mercenaries what the Taken franchise did for Liam Neeson, Paris and Albanian gangsters.

Ripe, borderline hammy turns from Javier Bardem, Ray Winstone, Idris Elba and Mark Rylance add some spice and box-office appeal, but otherwise this is pretty boilerplate stuff that takes itself way too seriously.

The opening prologue, set in 2006, establishes the bona fides of Penn's character, Jim Terrier, as a tough guy with a soft spot for his idealistic doctor girlfriend, Annie (Jasmine Trinca). These two crazy mixed-up kids are living together in the Democratic Republic of Congo where he toils, by day, for a security task force protecting mining operations and, by night, as a mercenary hit man for shadowy interests. When his associate, Felix (Bardem), who has barely disguised hots for Annie, assigns Terrier to assassinate the country's minister of mining (Clive Curtis), Jim has no choice but to leave the country -- and Annie -- immediately.

The years and opening credits pass, and now Jim has come back to Africa, this time to help the locals mine for themselves. And also, it seems, to surf, which affords the audience one of several opportunities to ogle Penn's gym-bunny abs. However, one day in the jungle, some heavies come looking for him. His fixer, Eugene (Ade Oyefeso, one of the only two black actors who have more than three lines here despite the amount of time spent in Africa), helps Jim quell the threat, but Jim realizes that the attack must have something to do with what happened in his past.

Retrieving secret squirrel stashes of passports, cash and weapons hidden around Europe, he begins looking up old associates from his mercenary days to find out who put out the hit on the hit man. He starts in London (a glassy haze of riverside apartments and skyscrapers), where he first checks in with Cox (Mark Rylance, still rocking the collar-length hair and shifty eyes from playing Cromwell in the BBC adaptation of Wolf Hall), a cynical former point man who has now gone semi-legit, and an aging muscle-for-hire, cor-blimey-guvnor-cockney Stanley (Ray Winstone, rocking greasy hair and a perpetually amused expression).

They don't seem to know anything, so next Jim's off to Barcelona, where Felix is now promoting nonspecific business ventures in Africa to help the poor, and is shacked up with Annie. Jim stalks her 'round town, giving the film some time to bask in the Catalonian atmosphere and establish that she and Felix are planning to adopt a child, before he finally gets up the courage to visit her. There are literally just seconds between her giving him the obligatory angry-woman slap and then pulling him into bed for some ex-sex. Later, they grow even closer when he saves her from yet more angry hit guys who pounce when Jim comes to Annie and Felix's countryside mansion for lunch.

Up until this point, the cast's natural charisma and talent are sufficient to maintain interest in the thinly written material, credited to Penn, Don MacPherson (The Avengers) and Pete Travis (Dredd), which pays lip service to the troubles in the African republic via some news footage montages and clunky explication. The political agenda doesn't mesh in a meaningful way with the soapier drama hinged on which unappealing man Annie will end up with -- the dead-eyed assassin or the sleazy businessman. But Trinca's role is so underwritten it's clear that the romance is of secondary interest to the filmmakers, and ultimately she's merely a pawn in a game of macho action-movie chess, shot by Flavio Labiano in the manner of the Bourne films with hand-held rigs and grainy-looking stock.

It all becomes even more of a slog once Jim and Annie start schlepping around Spain on the lam, visiting Gibraltar for the big, entirely predictable denouement as to who is the real villain and then back to Barcelona for a climactic showdown at a bullfighting ring (despite the fact that Catalonia banned the sport in 2012). But history be damned; it's a picturesque setting for a chase sequence with all those crowds, corridors and dangerous livestock. Somewhere along the way, Elba lurches into view as an Interpol agent who wants to help Jim, although the need for discretion is apparently so great he has to couch his offer of assistance in a tortuous, overextended metaphor about building a treehouse that seems so coy and circumlocutory you'd think they'd set up the rendezvous through a dating website. The scene tips the movie into camp, and by the end it becomes something of a giggle-fest, surely not the intended aim of the filmmakers.

MovieStyle on 03/20/2015