Free Fire takes place entirely in an abandoned warehouse during the 1970's. Members of the IRA, which include actor Cillian Murphy, are there to buy guns from dealers, which include intermediary Brie Larson, lead dealer Sharlto Copley, and his associate Armie Hammer.
Already you can tell this crew of bosses and their really stupid associates is a powder keg just waiting for someone to go off half-cocked, which of course someone does for his own, albeit good, reason leading to a huge shoot-out stretched out into a feature length film.
The problem with Free Fire is that nagging suspicion in the back of your mind most of these people can call this fight at any time and most don't need to be in it in the first place. There are 2 people who have a problem with each other, a lot of the others just seem to be brandishing guns and just doing a lot of dick wagging.
Other than Brie Larson, who of course doesn't have one. She does have a Oscar however and she's been slumming ever since. Apparently the best roles she can get now are action movies where she gets to fire a weapon a couple times but other than just stand around the Kraft Foods table with whatever foreign co-star is next in line.
There is some funny stuff here, courtesy of Copley, whose probably the best cartoon actor working today. Armie Hammer, this is an actor who always seems to have a stick up his ass no matter what film he's in. Sometimes it's funny, sometimes not. He gets a few funny lines here, nothing incredible.
There's also Cillian Murphy who I kinda started to think may emerge as something of a rootable hero here but really no one ever is given that kind of development that you care whether they live or die and honestly why no one just doesn't call a detente on this just makes them seem like morons.
There are some moments involving fire and exploding hydrogen that at least make the action scenes worth it but then there are these long stretches where people are just firing guns and bullets are landing anywhere but in a person's body and you're like Jesus, this is worse than a Steven Seagal film. He's so fat, why can't you hit him?
Not only that but you can also barely tell who's shooting at who or what side some of the lesser known actors are even on. The whole movie just seems like it could work as a short film but stretch it this deep with motivations and characters this flimsy and it just becomes a bore. So 5 out of 10 guys.
