GUNNER Review: Luke Hemsworth Carries A Worthwhile Action Thriller Disarmed By Its Own Mediocrity
It’s been close to twelve years since I restarted this journey a little more formally as a “news guy” – less so of a “review” guy as I was only just beginning to find my own rhythm. That search eventually evolved into something that implored me to be a little more responsible in how I watch movies, thusly calibrating a lot of my viewpoints into that of someone who some filmmakers won’t take kindly to. I’m okay with that, frankly, as I would rather be a critic and enjoy what I do than someone’s cat’s paw, and be a little more honest with my perceptions on film. Especially when it comes to action.
Enter Acme Rocket Fuel’s Dimitri Logothetis, known as the frontman for the current Kickboxer reboot franchise which includes its upcoming third installment, and sci-fi action thriller, Jiu Jitsu, which is based on an in-house graphic novel. I’ve had plenty to say about these films and then some, and so it’s no stretch at this juncture to say how frustrating it is to see a director efforting to craft something that intends to cater to my needs as a filmgoer, only to fall short of being a winner in my book. Thankfully, Logothetis’s latest movie, Gunner, does toil a little more when it comes to its brimming dramatic talent roster, and for a film that does manage to accomplish just a little more than its maker’s predecessors. And really, without going into the negatives right away, that’s about all it does.
The core cast gets the flowers it deserves with Luke Hemsworth continually proving to be one of the strongest choices to lead an action vehicle I’ve seen since I first caught him in Kriv Stender’s hitman comedy, the Simon Pegg-led Kill Me Three Times, and up until his most recent supporting role for sibling star Liam Hemsworth in William Eubank’s Land Of Bad. The film also stars Mykel Shannon Jenkins who’s been making waves for roughly about the same period, including with roles in Bao Tran’s The Paper Tigers, as well as his own independent crime drama thrillers, The Gods, and its sequel, The Gods 2: The Dark Side.
Written by Logothetis and co-scribe Gary Scott Thompson, Hemsworth plays the title role of Lee Gunner, a celebrated war hero whose return to his family in their Southern town finds him mitigating the rift between himself and his sons after mysteriously disappearing for a year. In an effort to reconnect, they plan a camping trip only to stumble upon a drug factory in the woods, putting Gunner’s family in imminent danger and under intense fire, forcing Gunner on a dangerous mission he must accomplish if he’s to protect his family from the mercenaries commanded by elusive drug runner, Dobbs, played by Jenkins. Both actors are joined by Morgan Freeman who takes on the antagonistic side of things in the role of Dobb’s father, Kendrick, incarcerated shot caller and patriarch to the familial crime organization now left to his son to manage.
Gunner plays off as the kind of film that might have made bank in the early 2000s as a run-of-the-mill patriotic action thriller suited for middle American audiences. The cast performances are great for the most part, including by Hemsworth and actress Yulia Klass who plays Gunner’s wife, Claire, and by Barry Jay Minoff who plays Uncle Jon to the on-screen nephews, Travis (Connor DeWolf) and Luke (Grant Feely). The best part on the drama front is when Freeman and Hemsworth finally come face to face a little over halfway in which does steers the movie forward quite a bit, and unfortunately, that’s really how long it takes for things to really get interesting. I did enjoy watching how Dobbs and Kendrick talk business in their scenes during visiting hours at the prison, which did have me wishing I could actually attend an actual cookout by these two.
What tends to fall short in Gunner is the half-baked development between Gunner and Travis, the second-eldest son. We see as Travis emerges from rebellious and indifferent teenager to a young man who eventually grows to see his father for the hero he’s lauded to be, and the sacrifices he’s made and tragedy they’ve faced in that process. Nuances and visual stimuli aside, this aspect of the film ends up falling flat in the writing, particularly when the subject of the terrorist attacks that occured on September 11, 2001 comes into focus in the film’s first half. It’s less of a discussion than a cursory blurb fleshed out in a script to paint Travis as an ungrateful, intolerant skeptic and army brat for a subject matter that’s been explored way more elaborately over the years than what Logothetis’s Gunner lays out here in anecdotal and perfunctory form.
Not for nothing either, but there’s a scene where our hero forces his way into the home of a rich family to find his second-eldest son, Travis, in a rather compromising position that unravels in pretty unrealistic fashion as far as fatherly discipline goes. To say the least, there’s less of a struggle for our protagonist when it comes to his chemistry with younger son Luke, which helps preamble the chatter Gunner and Kendrick share later on in the film on the subject of fathers and fatherhood. It’s definitely one of the film’s fewer, brisk, albeit more comforting moments of drama that bring necessary depth and closeness to some of our characters.
In a great deal of the aforementioned, Gunner has much of what it needs to help stand on its own as the kind of dramatic, compelling and propulsive action thriller fans could walk away happily from, much like the elements used in Pierre Morel’s Taken or John Bonito’s The Marine which served as the launchpad for its own slate of direct-to-digital actioners. Much to our chagrin however, Gunner suffers aplenty from the ails that stem from having a director at the helm, whose particular creative choices here result in a product that fares less than great. Par for the course is the substandard use of CG that makes obvious the discontinuity of moments where our hero can be seen parachuting out of a plane, reacting inordinately to surrounding gun fire, and select explosions that wreak of previous zero-budget nightmares I all but abstained from watching based on their trailers.
Gunner also tries desperately to live up to the brand Logothetis is building for himself as the latest among the cadre of filmmakers catering to martial arts action fandom. To this end, Hemsworth is presented in formidable, screenfighting fashion for many of the action sequences in which he and his select co-stars are featured, which is to say nothing of other moments of fisticuffs where Logothetis tries to exude some of the same vivacity we get in the first action scene where our hero lays out several thugs in a bar fight. One scene in the first half of the film has our hero squaring off with co-stars Tanja Keller and June Sasitorn in a scene, and with upbeat music that make absolutely no sense, and takes away from the momentous thrill of seeing our hero fight for his life. The same scene includes a fight exchange with artificial lens flares reflecting off of the bladed weapons being used. It’s total overkill in the name of fanservice.
Another action scene later in the film finds our hero surrounded and held by gunpoint and laying his own weapon on a tilted piece of plywood which he stomps to kick his gun back in hand, and for some reason, Logothetis – straight out of the Oliver Megaton’s “How To” manual on poor editing – thought it would be cool to use nearly a dozen goddamn cuts for this one shot. The biggest laugh I got was the one I had when one of the main characters suffers what can only be described as the dumbest death-by-shotgun I’ve ever seen in an action movie, and there’s little to salvage this thing except to try and suspend as much disbelief as possible without screaming. Also, don’t get me started on why it is that this movie features inessential, animated English subtitles to caption two of Asian co-stars when they’re speaking in scenes opposite Jenkins. I get why, but the accents weren’t THAT thick.
If I were a younger man watching this movie, I would have been more than willing to dismiss so many of this film’s flaws. Then again, I was a dumber, younger man, which, in my view, is the kind of target audience a movie like Gunner goes for, in large part. Then again, I would like to add that beneath all of the bluster and jingoistic ballyhoo Logothetis proffers here is a compelling rescue actioner worth admiring – just (maybe) shy of completely vapid, vacuous, creatively dissonant and frankly tonedeaf. Depending on your tastes, that could very well be the case. All I can really conclude with here is if you decide to watch Gunner, take my criticisms with a grain of salt. Either way, here’s hoping it doesn’t prematurely nuke the chances of Kickboxer: Armageddon faring better as a reflection of Logothetis’s craft.
