The shootout, often a ballet, is a battle royale in Ben Wheatley’s “Free Fire.”
When the bullets start flying, Wheatley’s arms-deal-gone-wrong 1970s shoot-up comes to a crawl. There’s a total absence of slow-motion cartwheels. No one miraculously walks through a wall of fire to kill the bad guys with three precise shots. Not a single Scarlett Johansson roundhouse kick is in the house.
‘Free Fire’
Rating: R for “strong violence, pervasive language, sexual references and drug use.”Running time: 90 minutes.
Instead, people get maimed, bloodied and dead. There’s no subsequent chase or flight from the police, just bickering and trench warfare … for the majority of the 90 minute film. The movie is 100 percent O.K. Corral.
It’s a formally impressive feat – set nearly entirely in the same rundown warehouse – but a thin and tedious one.