The Gunman

A B-movie filmed as an A-movie. Sean Penn is incredibly fit for his age and the action scenes are some of the best of this genre, but there are too few of them and you can’t enjoy them properly when the hero starts keeling over prematurely due to brain damage. And when we’re on the topic of laying down, the romantic storyline with the love triangle seems like it’s been copied out of a textbook - reminiscent of French movies of the 70s. The acting aces (why does Bardem always have that look on his face?) are almost unused (Idris Elba made a more or less a cameo appearance) and Penn doesn’t put on a very impressive performance despite his damaged character. This terribly average story with such realistically unpleasant characters was probably impossible to save. And the shamelessly stilted finale was impressive only for the location. It’s one of those unshocking, but uninspiring movie that you might watch on TV, but paying to see it at the movie theater would be a waste of money. Both Morel and Penn can do better. (22/03/2015)

Something between Payback and Blood Diamond. There's the same politics and disputes over a country's mineral wealth, as well as a love triangle that doesn't quite work and is rather secondary. Maybe it's not as romantic or grand, but I don't expect any wilderness from Pierre Morel, rather a story that has pace and doesn't bother with unnecessary digressions that would hinder quality action – and that's exactly what I got. I haven't seen Sean Penn this loaded before, and it's quite nice, with dynamic, proper and well edited action and an excellent final fight. I wouldn't hesitate to say it's a solid addition to the genre. Definitely nothing new what do you really expect from Morel? (22/03/2015)

What made Sean Penn switch from Oscar-worthy performances and directing Into the Wild to the character of an action hero in a coproduction with Joel Silver? A job another former character actor, Liam Neeson, didn’t dream of and now has three of them lined up every year? Gunman doesn’t want to be modernly stylish; it wants to be dirty and dark, with an ambiguously clean protagonist. I personally like this take and have no problem with Penn’s character. On the contrary, it’s the only thing that makes the movie interesting and different from its genre siblings, as it doesn’t excel in any other respect. The script seems to have been written twenty years ago, at the times of Harrison Ford’s Jack Ryan (to which it would have been a “dark alternative”). And mainly it dawdles with a romantic storyline no one really cares about. (26/03/2015)

In the genre of action thrillers, The Gunman certainly holds its ground, offering quite a gripping spectacle. Sean Penn, in the lead role, proves once again that he is rightfully among the best American actors. It doesn't concern his acting qualities, but I must mention that I wondered where the hell he got those perfectly sculpted muscles in his old age. Under the impression of recent films I've seen, however, I must deduct one star from my original plan. After all, this drama stands and falls with one single character, embodied by Sean Penn. (65%) (12/05/2020)

I didn't want to believe in this negative rating, but this is truly a movie that just pretends to be very serious and conscious, but in the end, it's just an action spectacle where Sean Penn shows that it's not a problem for him to show his bare chest even after the age of fifty and to express that a man can do it if he wants to. (19/07/2016)