MM D: Ben Wheatley. UK. 90 min. Sep 8, 11:59 pm, Ryerson Sep 9, 11:30 am, Ryerson. Rating: NNNN
Festival favourite Wheatley follows last year’s High-Rise with another 70s tale, this one rougher, grittier and even more chaotic. It’s also a hell of a lot of fun, with Brie Larson, Armie Hammer, Cillian Murphy, Michael Smiley, Control’s Sam Riley, District 9’s Sharlo Copley and Sing Street’s Jack Reynor as various parties trapped in an abandoned warehouse after an arms sale explodes into violence.
Wheatley and co-writer Amy Jump structure the script invisibly but brilliantly once the bullets start flying, the trajectory of each one is informed by the relationship between the person firing it and the intended target. That allows Free Fire to be intense, funny, absurd and even political, sometimes all at once.
It’s also a hair on the bloody side, but we’ve come to expect that from Wheatley and Jump.
