Best movie of this year hands down!

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Nothing but bang bang, bang, bang for 90 minutes for absolutely no reason. Guns that never emptied, shots missed at point blank range and people still crawling round shot up like a cullender. A shoot-up can be worth watching, but not this one.

Various people arrive in a deserted warehouse to do an illegal gun deal. Shots are fired. This is essentially an extended shoot them up action play in a single room. The problem starts with a lack character exposition. This is important because it's hard to tell who is on which side. Once the shooting starts, it's hard to tell the geography or the teams. It's a lot of shots in the legs. It would be compelling if I cared about any of the characters. It may be more compelling to do this rooting for one side. I don't even care if either side wins, loses, or dies. That's a hard way to watch a shoot them up.

Free Fire opens with an arms deal, introducing a range of colorful characters, dark humor, but a sense of tension from the whole scenario being a bit of a tinderbox. This first third (give or take) of the film is probably the best, as it contains plenty of good interactions and dialogue. From here the film turns into a scruffy gunfire in the warehouse; it is occasionally funny, occasionally violent, occasionally tense, and mostly entertaining. Problem is, it never really builds up in any of those areas in the way you'd like.The initial outbreak of violence feels like a release of the built-up pressure, and there is a pleasure in seeing that happen, and seeing it quickly spiral out of control. However the film has to spend the next hour in this space, and although each character is "resolved" in some way, generally it doesn't manage to pay-off the good build up. It does still tick along in a way that is enjoyable in how dark and simple it is, but at the same time it doesn't quite satisfy for what it does. The cast is impressive on paper, and do pretty well on the screen, but I did have the feeling that I would have liked them to have had more to do once the film got into its crawling and shooting stuff - although Hammer is good throughout.Worth a look (and probably one of Wheatley's more mainstream films), but it doesn't deliver on the promise of its first section, even if it does still provide enough to entertain.

There has been movies that had a very small space that have worked quite well. Phone Booth. Buried. This got about 70% there but was overcome with some poor choices. I read a bit about the production and watched the "making of" attachment on the DVD. That gave me some clues.Apparently much of the choice for it to take place in the '70s was due to cellular phones. Not much of a movie when you can call for help. But that choice also came with having some reference to it being the '70s. A few disco jokes? Someone served in Vietnam? Something like that. I think there was one passive reference to a guy's suit and that was it. And the John Denver 8-track, I suppose.Additionally the director apparently did quite a lot of research on shootouts and how they really go down. Then patterned the action to it. All well and good and seemed to reflect that because there was an absence of action and flash to it all. I'm glad it didn't flip to a Tarantino Xerox blood fest, but maybe more of early John Woo? Something more with a flair. Sure, there were slights-of-hand to the visuals, but hardly enough vs. the latitude that was there. And I thank it again for not going totally Tarantino with the dialogue and characters. There were some as they were all criminals, so a comparison was inevitable. A distinction to each and every one was present with solid acting talent behind them. Yes, it was likely that such criminals would have said the "F" word just as frequently as the characters, but was a pain to listen to in a movie and took away from further potential exposition. Not that I was offended. It was just verbal junk.I also found the logistics suspect. I was not really sold on there not being any way out for any of the characters. Even the two "suprise guests" suggested they entered from a direction that would then provide escape for the others. But they were never used or tried. It was a subject that was just dropped. And the endless supply of bullets was growing tedius. The lead-up to the shoot out was engaging and entertaining, though. But it had more to it on a whole that wasn't there. Room for another 10-15 minutes. So it shot itself in the foot in the end. (See what I did there, eh? Wink wink.)