It’s been awhile, but things have been hectic ’round these parts. Partially due to the Kickstarter I launched for my comic, Robin Hood: Outlaw of the 21st Century. Check it out for some cool rewards and to help a starving artist out.
Of course, in my busy-ness, I sort of missed the opportunity to chat about the Captain Marvel trailer. If you haven’t seen it yet, get out from under your rock and click the link. It’s quite good. It’s not one of those trailers that gives away all the best parts of the movie. They give you just enough to make you want to see the movie. All you see is that she’s a hero, she’s from Earth but has some ties to an alien race, and she can shoot lasers from her hands. I mean, I already know her story and I’m intrigued.
I’ll talk a lot more about Captain Marvel as we move along, but this is about movies that Brie Larson has already made. Now, I’ve ragged on a few of her movies in my previous posts, but because I’m feeling such good vibes from the trailer, I decided to cover what is, to date, my favorite Brie Larson movie, Free Fire.
A lot of people probably have never even heard of this movie, and if I weren’t scouring the globe for Brie Larson movies, I maybe wouldn’t have, either. And that would be unfortunate, because it’s a totally fun, awesome movie, one that I would have loved in college during my “Tarantino is God” phase, and totally worth your time (Seriously, it’s available free with Prime now, and I when is say “worth your time,” I mean it because it’s exactly 91 minutes, and 60 of them are one, long gunfight.)
Larson herself had just come from filming Room, for which she would win critical acclaim and an Oscar, but at the time, she was just making a fun action movie alongside Armie Hammer and Cillian Murphy. In fact, it was likely for the best that it happened that way, because the fame that came from her performance in Room could have possibly changed the vibe that this movie had going on, and that would have sucked, because the vibe that Free Fire had going on was that of a shoot-’em-up, gonzo, late-70’s blood bath. No CGI monsters smashing buildings or giants sky-lasers. Just people shooting each other and crawling around on the ground, wounded. And the great part is, when these people get shot, they feel it, and they scream in pain, and the people that shoot them even sometimes feel a little bad.
As a brief aside, can I just say that I am finding Armie Hammer to actually be quite an accomplished actor? I had honestly never heard of him before that horrible Lone Ranger debacle, but this dude has some chops. I love that he plays his handsomeness for comedy more often than not, where a lot of handsome Hollywood actors play their handsomeness for handsomeness.
The quick rundown of the story, such as it is, goes like this; in 1978 Boston, Larson’s Justine is helping to broker a deal between criminals for some rifles. So, of course, when you get a bunch of stupid criminals and some guns and put them together in an enclosed space, hilarity will ensue. As Larson puts it, Free Fire is simply “an action movie making fun of action movies.” That’s pretty good, but I don’t see it as “making fun,” as much as paying tribute to them, and making one that’s actually quite simple, and very good. There is of course some subtlety in the performances, of course, especially Hammer’s sweet-talking, sharp-dressed kingpin, and Sharlto Copley’s stupidly fake-smooth Vernon, and there’s some nods to the political unrest in Northern Ireland (hence the guns), but even if I didn’t see the opening minutes and had no idea who anyone was, I would have enjoyed this movie immensely.
Also, I know this may seem biased, but Larson happens to be playing the most intelligent character in the movie. She is the only female, and definitely stands out among the leisure suits and bad facial hair, but there is also an edge to her that just isn’t seen in a lot of action movies from previous generations (She even has a great moment, while pointing her gun at one of her rivals: “We can’t all be nice girls.”) There were saucy female characters, to be sure, and there were hordes of Marion Ravenwood-esque women who could hold their own with the male bad guys, but also in the end had to be rescued by their leading men. Justine needs no rescuing, and in fact, has one up on all of them, and plainly states as much when she responds to one of the dimwit crooks when he asks if she’s F.B.I.: “I’m I.I.F.M.,” which stands for In It For Myself. I mean, Marion Ravenwood was definitely in it for the money (at least at first), but even she wasn’t savvy enough to put one over on both Indiana Jones and Rene Belloq.
I would like to say that I don’t want to spoil the movie for anyone, but that’s really not an issue here. I guess I won’t tell you who, if anyone, gets away, but let me just say a bunch of people get shot, all of them more than once, there’s a lot of jokes and quips, Armie Hammer smokes a lot of weed, the filmmakers make great use of John Denver on the soundtrack, and assuming they have a pulse, the audience goes home happy. But don’t let the lack of plot twists and turns get you down, because, as I said earlier, there are great characters and performances in here. They are done so well, in fact, that even though they are all criminals, you kind of want them to make it. But you know that never really happens in these movies. Just enjoy them while they’re there, because it’s pretty unlikely you’ll see a Free Fire II: Guns Blazin’ anytime soon.
In closing, I would be remiss if I didn’t post my favorite gif, one that I’ve used before in this blog, but now I can give it some context because it’s from this movie, and it pretty much tells you what the movie is all about. When Vernon sees Justine for the first time in awhile, he remarks that she is lovely, but also that she’s put on a bit of weight, and hopes that no one has “put a bun in her oven.” Justine’s reply, and the only appropriate one in this or any other era:
So, yeah, see Free Fire.
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