The Gunman review

The Gunman (15/R, 115 mins)
Director: Pierre Morel
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Sean Penn becomes the latest actor to take a shot at over-50 action stardom with this overwrought Euro-pudding that has ideas way above its station for a movie from the director of Taken. A prologue set a few years ago in war-torn Congo introduces us to Penn as part of a team of mercenaries protecting a humanitarian aid crew. While they're there they also happen to have a sideline in assassinations, and Penn’s shooting of a government official comes back to haunt him in the present day when he links an attempt to kill him to the plot. As an exercise in globe-trotting, The Gunman is slick, its fights are crunching and the body count is massive, and Penn does get to showcase some nice skills in a couple of decent action sequences. But it’s all rather dour and much too leisurely to convince, jazzed up with a classy cast (Javier Bardem, Mark Rylance and Idris Elba are in there too) yet hardly any more legitimate than The Expendables, with its attempt to call attention to humanitarian issues proving risible. It’s a Jason Statham movie that thinks it’s fancy, too silly to be taken seriously and too serious to be any fun.

Gangster Squad review

Gangster Squad (15/R, 113 mins)
Director: Ruben Fleischer
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Inspired by real events, this silly, intermittently enjoyable thriller takes place in Los Angeles in 1949, where mobster Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) is hellbent on taking over the town with his drugs and vice empire. With most of the city’s cops on his payroll, it falls to honest sergeant John O'Mara (Josh Brolin) to lead Ryan Gosling and a small team in an effort to shut down Cohen’s operation through any means necessary. Strong in its period detailing and festooned in wall-to-wall violence, Gangster Squad is slick enough, and yet the action sequences consistently remind you that you're not watching The Untouchables, as much as director Ruben Fleischer might want you to think you are. And all the muscular gunplay and smoky production design in the land can’t always overcome a sloppy script that ticks every box you might imagine it would. Gosling’s relationship with Cohen’s moll Grace (Emma Stone) aims for Bogart-Bacall cool, but the pair are unexpectedly and disappointingly lacking in heat, and their byplay comes up some way short, while the focus on that and Brolin’s family life means the rest of the squad (Anthony Mackie, Robert Patrick, Michael Peña, Giovanni Ribisi) barely register as characters. But a dead-eyed Penn is terrific, and when the action occasionally finds the bullseye, there’s just enough vibrant style to see it through.