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Two-time Oscar winner Sean Penn’s extraordinary talents have earned him the right to be considered one of the most versatile actors in cinema. Aside from his memorable dramatic roles, Penn’s recent satirical turn as an overzealous military commander in One Battle After Another showcased his rare comedic talents, rarely seen since Fast Times and Ridgemont High and We’re No Angels. If there was ever one genre where the actor was completely out of his depth, it was the moment Penn tried his hand at the action genre with 2015’s The Gunman.
The European-set action thriller from Taken’s Pierre Morel attempted to have Penn follow the path of another critically acclaimed actor, Liam Neeson, by making the transition into action films involving aging combat veterans forced out of retirement to face dangerous threats. Based on the novel The Prone Gunman by Jean-Patrick Manchette, The Gunman attempted to elevate Penn’s credibility as an intense method performer to elevate an otherwise political espionage thriller. Largely dismissed by critics with a 15% rotten score on Rotten Tomatoes, the underperformance of The Gunman turned out to be for the better when it comes to Penn’s career.
What Is ‘The Gunman’ About?
In 2006, black-ops contractor Jim Terrier (Penn) leads a team under the employment of a Congo-based mine corporation to assassinate the Minister of Mining before ceasing the company’s unlawful contracts. Once Terrier succeeds in the mission, he leaves the country and his NGO doctor girlfriend Annie (Jasmine Trinca) behind. The death of the Minister only intensifies an already devastating civil war in the Congo.
Eight years after the assassination, a PTSD-ridden Terrier returns to Africa to build wells for charity when a group of hitmen attempts to take his life. Though he survives the ambush, Terrier learns from his former colleague Stanley Cox (Mark Rylance) that their former superior, Felix Marti (Javier Bardem), is running a powerful security firm seeking to take down all the contractors involved in the Minister’s assassination. With aid from a seasoned mercenary pal, Stanley (Ray Winstone), Terrier must travel from London to Spain to take down the firm and save a captive Annie, even as some people he considers friends cannot be trusted.
‘The Gunman’ Is Slowed Down by Socially Conscious Themes
The Gunman tries to avoid Taken’s narrative simplicity by trying to deliver a thought-provoking subject matter of corruption in the Congo while showcasing a peak shape Penn getting into brutal fight sequences with assassins across the globe. Director Morel lets Penn execute some grounded but messy Krav Maga martial arts techniques, like in The Bourne Identity franchise. But similar to another Penn thriller, The Interpreter, The Gunman struggles because the grounded action gets weighed down by socially conscious themes injected by the star, who co-wrote the screenplay with Don McPherson (1998’s Godzilla) and Pete Travis (Dredd). So much of the film’s momentum slows down during the intimate romance scenes of Penn and Trinca having philosophical conversations about atoning for the ex-mercenary’s past sins. Their scenes together are better suited for a straight Penn drama like 21 Grams, which is more character-driven. Not even future Oscar winners Bardem and Rylance, as well as a glorified cameo by Idris Elba as an Interpol agent, elevate the material because they are lacking a particular fun factor for a typical action movie, and instead get forced to play stock, one-dimensional characters.
Part of what drew Penn to The Gunman was the lack of “check your brain at the door” material in the concept. The actor told Collider in 2015 that “there were a lot of consequences to the violence” that don’t wink to the audience or “rely on a lot of humorous quips and things like that or banter between characters in a buddy action picture”. Yet, Penn’s Terrier lacks a personal connection to the audience in the way Neeson’s Bryan Mills had in Taken. While it was jarring to see an established dramatic actor of Neeson’s stature play a fantastical action hero, he played the familial traits of a protective father who had a dangerous edge that made him identifiable to any parent. Penn as Terrier, however, can’t get through evading bad guys without constantly breaking a mental sweat. His effort at making Terrier a real-world, morally gray protagonist suppresses the audience’s escapism for a popcorn-friendly action movie.
The failure of The Gunman was a clear-cut case that Penn works best in dramas where he finds truth in both his character and the subject matter, rather than making the attempt to inform in the midst of what could have been solid Friday night entertainment. Looking back to his early film roles in Bad Boys and At Close Range, Penn’s characters were never straight-laced personalities but instead troubled men struggling to hold on to any sense of humility. Though those classics allowed breathing room to explore such human complexities, The Gunman’s effort to carry a similar approach ends up making what could have been a Bourne-style epic into an overly subconscious monotone thriller.
The Gunman is available to stream on Prime Video in the US.
