Son of a Gun

Son of a Gun is less a swag­ger­ing, pis­tol-pack­ing prog­e­ny and more like the slight­ly weedy, none-too-smart off­spring of supe­ri­or bruis­ers such as Heat and Ani­mal King­dom. Writer/​director Julius Avery makes his fea­ture debut with a some­times ris­i­ble Aussie thriller notable for its kinet­ic cam­er­a­work, pacey action sequences and occa­sion­al com­ic flour­ish­es but which is huge­ly ham­pered by its adher­ence to genre clichés, a rou­tine lack of cred­i­bil­i­ty and poor­ly thought through storyline.

But it’s the cast­ing of the charm­less Bren­ton Thwait­es in the lead role that is the film’s biggest prob­lem. Thwait­es plays wide-eyed junior crook JR. That he is able to com­mu­ni­cate such mea­gre brain activ­i­ty sits ill with the fact that he’s por­trayed as being a chess whizz who, on arriv­ing in prison for a short stretch, quick­ly enam­ours him­self to noto­ri­ous bank rob­ber and fel­low chess enthu­si­ast, Bren­dan (Ewan McGregor).

In exchange for Brendan’s pro­tec­tion inside, JR agrees to help him break out once he’s released, which we wit­ness dur­ing a sequence of stag­ger­ing improb­a­bil­i­ty. Despite his absence of expe­ri­ence and scream­ing lack of nous, JR then becomes inte­gral to Brendan’s crim­i­nal activ­i­ty, play­ing a bizarrely piv­otal part in a gold heist and enter­ing into a dan­ger­ous, absurd­ly rose-tint­ed liai­son with glam­orous East­ern Euro­pean moll Tasha (played by Swedish actress Ali­cia Vikan­der, who in a case of odd­ly con­trast­ing cast­ing is show­ing more pluck and less leg as wartime hero­ine Vera Brit­tain in Tes­ta­ment of Youth).

As well as tak­ing inspi­ra­tion from the afore­men­tioned crime thrillers, Son of a Gun’s rushed prison act suf­fers by com­par­i­son to the recent grim­ly authen­tic and star­tling­ly com­pas­sion­ate Starred Up. Unlike his young co-star Thwait­es, McGre­gor has screen charis­ma to spare; nev­er­the­less he remains rather too affa­ble through­out, lack­ing the lethal edge to cut it as a hard­ened criminal.

The film’s dou­ble-cross­es are dun­der­head­ed and the romance is embar­rass­ing­ly awful, with the real­i­ty of Tasha’s sit­u­a­tion with crim­i­nal boss Sam (Jacek Koman) skirt­ed around in an insult­ing attempt to keep her a viable, basi­cal­ly ​‘clean’ roman­tic option. We’re told she’s hooked up with the gang in order to secure cit­i­zen­ship; that this doesn’t involve her hav­ing to sleep with any­one, just to strut around look­ing pret­ty at strip clubs and par­ties, seems extra­or­di­nar­i­ly unlikely.

Cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Nigel Bluck, who got his school­ing as the sec­ond unit DoP on the three Lord of the Rings films, is on hand to save the day, and his urgent, ener­getic and appeal­ing­ly sun-kissed work holds your atten­tion beyond the film’s many far-fetched machi­na­tions. Avery has pro­duced some­thing that’s super­fi­cial­ly enter­tain­ing, occa­sion­al­ly amus­ing and that zips along, so while it stretch­es creduli­ty at least it won’t test your patience. But place Son of a Gun under even the most cur­so­ry scruti­ny and it falls com­plete­ly apart.