A Brilliant Conflict

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

The generically entitled African-American actioneer "Gun" qualifies as a potboiler at best, boasting a solid cast, some tolerable gunfights, profane dialogue exchanges, and atmospheric shots of Detroit. The surprises are few and far between, but "Freelancers" director Jessy Terrero doesn't linger needlessly on the obvious. Payback is indeed a bitch, and nobody can say that "Gun" doesn't punish its perpetrators and reward its heroes. A paunchy Val Kilmer plays Angel, an ex-con whose wife died in a strip club during a shoot-out instigated by Rich (Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson), so Angel turns into a confidential informant for veteran Motor City Detective Rogers (James Remar of "The Warriors") who is trying to bust him. Detective Jenkins (Paul Calderon of "Pulp Fiction") is at Rogers' side trying to take care of business despite budget cuts that the city imposes on the men in blue. Initially, Angel proves his worth to Rich during a night-time deal with an Hispanic gangster, Frankie Makina (Danny Trejo of "Machete"), who tries to pull a double-cross during a deal. Lurking in the background is a big-time mobster, Sam Boedecker John Larroquette of "Blind Date") who is searching for an arms dealer. One of the best scenes has Rich describing an arsenal of hardware to a criminal. The guns that he shows off are pretty impressive, particularly the weapon that fires slug that can penetrate Kelvar as if it were tin-foil. Nothing special but a good way to blow 82 minutes.

I thought wow, Val Kilmer, an aggressive rapper playing the gangster, a gritty Detroit story line... this looks great... but to put it simply there are TV shows that are produced better than this, and i'm not even talking about Mad Men quality either.Shame. Could have been on the Training Day level, even with a smaller budget. But no, it's boring, lame, poorly casted and ironically lacks any "bang" for the buck. The group of detectives are the worst.Fair play to fifty cent for exploring the acting game. With a real production crew and proper budget the two of them could have killed it. But i'm sorry 'fiddy' I want my five dollars back for renting it. This was horrible.Great example of why people say don't do things by half.

well i guess i did it again, wasted another hour and so of my life, i probably would have gotten more out of it by just "beeing", no seriously i'm not going to glorify how awful i thought this movie was, and to be honest i really hoped it would be somewhat watchable but no,, i really hope 50 will stick to music and let people with movies as a profession do what they know best, or at least with all that money get a proper storyline, the acting wasn't bad, and ever washed-up Val did a good job..but then again if it wasn't for poorly made movies like this one wouldn't appreciate good movies so,, thank you?!?!

Well I can't say it was really so bad. The images and sounds are entertaining enough and the story is simple enough, just one bullet is more than enough.Interesting how the dealer here is so quick to turn against his own crew and stick a new guy (who he met once in the past and was saved by him) and promote him to be number one guy, without knowing anything about him.I'd say the reality is that these guys got to hang out, and get to know each other pretty well.Val Kilmer was just so sulky and suspicious looking that he wouldn't have made it further than the first meeting.