
Once again, Dimitri Logothetis wasted incredible talent in Nicolas Cage, Tony Jaa, and Frank Grillo in the 2020’s utterly terrible Jiu Jitsu how were you supposed to believe he would ever rebound with a Luke Hemsworth vehicle? Gunner is a direct-to-DVD action flick made in the ’80s or ’90s where an action hero who can’t act barely makes an impact as he blows up an incompetent henchman. Morgan Freeman’s part is small, don’t get your hopes up Gunner is not a movie of his charm (will you blink twice if you were kidnapped, Mr. Freeman?). The dialogue is cringe-worthy even by Universal Soldier sequel standards, the acting is worse than a school play, and the action sequences are a mess with special effects that don’t even arouse a sense of pain and blood.
In this film, Hemsworth plays Lee Gunner, an Afghanistan war veteran who has received a Medal of Honor (laughs) and who is returning home to Clinton to look after the bar owned by his wife, Clarie (Yulia Klass). The establishment has more bikers and drug dealers than patrons, who conduct business or throw knives at the dart board. Lee smashes some troublemakers one night after they cross the line, which leads to vengeance. While out for a camping trip with his sons, teenage Travis (Connor DeWolfe) and youngest Luke (Grant Feely), and their Uncle Jon (Barry Jay Minoff), the family accidentally stumbles upon a gas station that is a front for a Fentanyl syndicate. Uncle Jon gets killed, Lee’s children get kidnapped, and the only one who can save them is well, Lee Gunner.
Logothetis and co-writer Gary Scott Thompson write a boring script. A drinking game where the word ‘gunner’ is the cue would require maiming one of those movies whereby the mid-act, you’d have downed 30 cans. Murdered like Family, Controlled Like the Cops, who break through the Mass are all familiar songs that have a chorus to go along with them. The basics of the movie are the remnants of champions who have been clipped off of the already-sick gun-toting pirate’s carcass. Logothetis’ vocabulary on the subject is quite monotonous and dull, which is a combination of stereotypes that have been pressed to the limit of reason.
Gunner is a horrific structure in every aspect of film-making. Abominable color correction makes a mockery of the already poorly integrated green screen driving scenes. Bullet shots could be easily passed off as cheap After Effects that got rushed to retain their creator’s paid account. And, heaven forbid, there are comedic edit cuts to people paragliding or laughably fake helicopters or low-angle shots which pass for stunt work but are actually C-grade visual crap. Logothetis’ crew better have been short of money and time because otherwise, there is no reason for what looks like an unedited version on screen.
‘Gunner’ As An Action Movie Templated Entertainer With Zero Creativity It’s not Gunner, not even close. The characters beheaded would have been amidst island cutthroats had it not been Gunner with very little adrenaline and a nonsensical story in the first place. The dartboard was possibly the only moment of creativity where rather unfathomably Lee lets go of his point-and-shoot prop only after winging a leather-clad villain in the back of the head with it. Swords become secondary with John Wick here, the ex-marine-fighting-alien-cyborg-thug as an excerpt from Lee Gunner’s bio. Logothetis tries to liven the situation a bit by plopping down the occasional ‘boom’, but that too was somewhat like a preschooler setting out his action figures for pretend play. The whole atmosphere is aesthetic as if they just have the twenty-page brochure made and the funding down and have nobody in the shadows for any actual sketches or illustrations. There is a very uniform quality of churn and burn. A hyperdome would just be putting it mildly.
That said, I don’t believe that Hemsworth is at fault either the eldest brother gets scripts that are scrawled on tissue paper. Lee Gunner is a D-List, Redbox-standard soldier boy who shows off his medals and squints through lines that would make a Rambo three movie look like child’s play. Mykel Shannon Jenkins is somehow voicing this early demonstrating father’s boy villain who has this weird cringe-worthy laugh that Dr Dobbs Ryker has meaning that every time he laughs it gets worse, and it does make barely any movement. The attempts at levity in the character of Gunner that Logothetis makes are however completely taken away by Leone’s film’s fakeness hence making Ryker’s laughing all too, inappropriate. The same may be said about Freeman’s grotesque mannerism when utilized in this manner in small doses as even he seems lost by the ado of the film even when he is acting. Or maybe Jenkins is just looking for any sign of life in her by now and the rest of the cast is looking such a corpse that couldn’t be more devoid of energy.
You can try, by investing your effort, to look at Gunner from a more positive perspective, but why bother? Out of touch Logothetis directed sequences with glaring editing errors, and the use of public domain music that does not suit the scenes as much as God couldn’t even do a cameo. No attention is paid to the quality of cinematography as per locations available, the narrative pace is always in a jump mode, and whatever respect Logothetis tries to depict in the last scene to the American soldiers of armed forces is never seen in the first place. Never in a million years would Gunner be called a worthy alternative to Jack Reacher, for this film is a cheeky attempt at being even acceptable. It’s a very specific set of cinematic mages, the one that’s been done a million times before and probably better every single time.
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