Studiocanal
MOVIE REVIEW
Free Fire (2017)
Obsessive readers of the small print, having spotted that Edgar Wright was an executive producer of Ben Wheatley‘s “Sightseers” and drawn some conclusions about that film’s intentions and wobbly rate of return, can go to town on “Free Fire” once the name of Martin Scorsese appears in the same capacity. It features a closed group of armed characters in a sealed location, a weapons deal that collapses in mistrust and sweary machismo, plus some ironic popular music on the soundtrack; so the director is hugging a certain strain of American crime story pretty tightly, at a time when that strain has become so naturalized as to have lost a lot of its virulence and surely all its surprise. Mr. Wheatley has a distinctive cinematic temperament, a very British high-altitude remove that on the domestic scene stands out so much that it might count as auteurist; but it isn’t the right tool for all jobs.