The Gunman (2015), R, ★

Sean Penn as the next Liam Neeson: Action Star.

Action movies. What's wrong with action movies today? One main problem is that the studios falsely advertise in its projects. This movie is a prime example. I might, as a footnote, that I thought this was an awful movie right from the get-go. Anyway, when the studios are confident in its movie, the material and its stars, they want to develop and craft a trailer and/or tv spots that can sell the movie in a big way without giving too much. Nowadays, they fail almost every single time because they are mostly full of itself or give too much away. This movie falls in the former category and when it sells as an action film, it is a dull soap opera of a drama with a little action but not much tension.

Jim Terrier (Sean Penn) is a sharp-shooting sniper in the mercenary assassination team in the Congo who kills the Mercenary of Mining. While there, he has a relationship with his lover, Annie (Jasmine Trinca). After eight years as an international fugitive, this event haunts Jim constantly and is forced to be separated from Annie. Jim learns from his ex-employers that he is become a target.

He now digs for wells until three local hit-men come in and try to kill him. Earlier on, we learned that Jim is in declining health and that may lead to symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. But, also, we know that Felix (Javier Bardem), his former colleague who was also sent in to kill the Mercenary of Mining, had a crush on Annie and now in the present day, he is married to her and now is teaching grammar school than becoming a surgeon or practicing medicine. Wait a minute, what? That's a huge transition.

Penn crashing Bardem's and Trinca's dinner date.

Holy crap! This is a lethargic and frustrating film because it had a promising premise that revolves around Penn's profession as a gunman and an intriguing narrative regarding his health involving his brain. Obviously, when the film establishes its set-up on his health, we never really come back to that and therefore, this empty set-up goes onto talky and trembling dialogue that goes on forever and turns into a pointless exercise of action that is illogical. How can a man with a health issue avoid stress to overcome it and gets shot or threatened by people who causes him stress? Wouldn't that make it worse for the Penn character? It bugged me throughout the movie. But, unfortunately, this is worse. Why is there very little action and we get a soap opera and a love triangle? Why is Penn shirtless for most of the movie? He just wanted to showcase his abs to display on-screen how hard he worked to get jacked up so he can become a future action star. He actually wore Kevlar to project himself as Arnold Schwarzenegger from Predator.

Sean Penn does what he can to establish himself as an action star but this movie does not propel him to become the next Liam Neeson. If he wants to be, I wish him the best of luck and find a better director and script. The female character from Trinca is boring and has nothing to do except cry and kiss and make love to people. Javier Bardem, I'm afraid, is even worse as a drunk lunatic who slogs his way through the script and wants to get a paycheck. There's very little bite from short supporting roles from Ray Winstone, Idris Elba and Mark Rylance. But, they have to speak terrible dialogue.

Now, onto the action sequences. They are carefully constructed well but the action is heavily edited and with not much stake until we know what the story is all about. They are just scenes to wake us up and say comments to ourselves like: "Oh, wait, there's an action scene?" "Look, there's a fist punching his face." "He macheted that guy." "Wasn't this called The Gunman?" "Oh, look, shooting." "Oh, a bull." "When is Penn going to put on his shirt?" "When is this movie going to be over?"

Pierre Morel, director of Taken, which established Liam Neeson as an action star, really messed up and created such a dreary film full of pacing issues, poor dialogue, clumsily edited action and lifeless characters. Sean Penn is a humanitarian, of course, but he falls into the wrong genre because he wants to be an action star. He's also a great actor. He can do way better than this. This is not a fun movie to behold and given that, people are going to walk out of the theater feeling robbed of their money for watching a soap opera that can be televised as a bad novella or a weak episode on a local TV station.

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