Free Fire

If you type the words ​‘gold­en hour-and-a-half’ into your favourite inter­net search engine, the results yield­ed will direct you to nos­tal­gic ​’90s dig­i­tal radio sta­tions, bet­ting web­sites, and a swim­ming pool in South­port called Splash World. It’s a term dropped in Ben Wheatley’s Free Fire, a film about how human beings will sac­ri­fice their own lives before either being proven wrong, or apologising.

Sharl­to Copley’s jab­ber­ing South African yup­pie capo, Vern, is wor­ried that he’s los­ing too much blood, hav­ing been clipped by bul­lets at var­i­ous points on his body. Armie Hammer’s Ord, a turtle­neck sport­ing, per­ma-baked gang­land facil­i­ta­tor, assures his charge that every­thing will be fine. The rule of the Gold­en Hour-and-a-half means that an ample win­dow remains for him to seek med­ical attention.

But there is no Gold­en Hour-and-a-half. Ord is invent­ing it to put a muz­zle on Vern, or per­haps he is adapt­ing the Gold­en Hour which, accord­ing to the very same search men­tioned above, is an actu­al thing that exists. Used here, it isn’t a hol­low ref­er­ence to med­i­cine, but a brief nod to movies them­selves and their cura­tive, restora­tive pow­ers. They can drag us through the mill emo­tion­al­ly, right to the cusp of car­diac melt­down, but there’s always safe­ty and secu­ri­ty glim­mer­ing in the mid­dle dis­tance. It’s no coin­ci­dence that Free Fire runs for exact­ly 90 min­utes. And you’d be hard pressed not to chalk up the time spent watch­ing this delec­tably vio­lent crim­i­nal caper movie as any­thing but golden.

Ben Wheat­ley is a rare bird in UK film. He’s a direc­tor mak­ing the films he wants to make, the way he wants to make them. He keeps a toe in the art­house but with an eye on the main­stream. He has no dis­cernible style, adapt­ing as the mate­r­i­al demands. Col­lect­ing all his films togeth­er, from 2009’s daz­zling sin­gle-set debut, Down Ter­race, to date, he’s proven him­self as a film­mak­er who can put his hand to any­thing that comes down the chute. A theme that runs through his films is the dis­so­lu­tion of con­fi­dence. He chips away at the cer­tain­ties of life, mak­ing sim­ple things com­plex. His cin­e­ma is an obstruc­tive act. He strips away the pos­si­bil­i­ties for hap­pi­ness like so much mildewed wood­chip wallpaper.

This new one is like a cracked cir­cus mir­ror reflec­tion of Wheatley’s pre­vi­ous, High-Rise. Where that film is sprawl­ing and sur­re­al, anar­chic and mis­an­throp­ic, this one is strict and struc­tured, immac­u­late­ly planned down to the frame and sport­ing a dopey grin through­out. High-Rise jolts off in ran­dom tan­gents and rejects con­ven­tion­al clo­sure (or, to be frank, con­ven­tion­al any­thing), where­as Free Fire is a cel­e­bra­tion of how images con­nect together.

They make for a nice dou­ble fea­ture – both about mixed groups of peo­ple who are stuck in a build­ing and, despite their desires to do so, just can’t seem to get up and leave. You could see them both as descen­dants of Luis Buñuel’s 1962 film, The Exter­mi­nat­ing Angel, itself about bour­geois par­ty guests psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly impris­oned in a din­ing room. Some­thing is draw­ing them back. It could be pride. It could be fear. Who knows?

It’s an invig­o­rat­ing work, main­ly because Wheat­ley nev­er once draws atten­tion to his own exem­plary crafts­man­ship. It’s per­haps his least stylised film, but also his most fun. Co-writ­ten with reg­u­lar part­ner in crime and elu­sive cine-spec­tre, Amy Jump, the film trades in a salty Boston ver­nac­u­lar and a mean line in mic-drop put­downs. It cen­tres on a bun­gled arms deal in a dilap­i­dat­ed, dock­side factory.

On Team A is what appears to be two, dou­ble-hard IRA gun run­ners: Chris (Cil­lian Mur­phy) and Frank (Michael Smi­ley). Cut­ting the fam in for some action, Frank fool­ish­ly invites along his gan­g­ly junkie nephew, Ste­vo (Sam Riley), for some grunt work. Team B, mean­while, is com­prised of Vern (“Vern and learn, baby!”), his nervy dis­co hulk wing­man, Mar­tin (Babou Ceesay), and ready-to-please under­ling Har­ry (Jack Reynor).

Armie Hammer’s Ord is present on diplo­mat­ic duties, and so is Brie Larson’s Jus­tine, who may or may not hold all the cards despite appear­ing as the inno­cent bystander at this macho gun/​dick mea­sur­ing con­test. It would be very easy to dis­miss the film as a fea­ture-length shoot out, but the dev­il is very much in the detail. Vern is fix­at­ed with the loot, Chris and Frank need those guns. Just as every­thing is set for sign-off, shots are red and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of an ami­ca­ble set­tle­ment flies out of the win­dow and into the sea.

Though the sto­ry of dou­ble, triple and quadru­ple cross­ings is sim­plic­i­ty itself (and as old as the hills), Free Fire couldn’t be more com­plex, as it mar­shals the action from var­i­ous van­tages and mon­i­tors every bul­let as it pings and ric­o­chets from the giant steel pil­lars hold­ing up the roof. One thing that’s extreme­ly sat­is­fy­ing about the film is that Wheat­ley nev­er cops out and shows a bird’s‑eye view of the fac­to­ry floor, to give a basic sense of where char­ac­ters are in rela­tion to one anoth­er. It would ruin the fun, and the sense that the view­er is placed right there, in the shit, with the rest of these repro­bate unfortunates.

Instead he con­veys the spa­cial spec­i­fi­ca­tions of the room the hard way, through pans, dol­lies, tilts and tracks. A sym­pho­ny of bul­let sounds fills the sound­track. Hear­ing a slight­ly dif­fer­ent tone of ​‘pfff!’, ​‘tak!’, ​‘dwang-ang-ang!’ evokes a shiv­er of delight, like an oppor­tu­ni­ty to col­lect all the dif­fer­ent nois­es. Wheat­ley makes you feel how far one per­son is away from anoth­er, and gives a strong sense of how far away they are from any exits.

The bal­let­ic cliché́ of the gun­fight is mut­ed in favour of empha­sis­ing its absurd squalor. The action man sta­ple of tak­ing numer­ous body shots and still being able to sprint, roll and engage in phys­i­cal com­bat, is an absolute no-no. These char­ac­ters sus­tain injuries which duly dec­i­mate their abil­i­ties. Not that the film would resort to any­thing as cheap, but this is a nail-bit­ing chess game where there are only pawns in play.

Free Fire also takes on mean­ing through its refusal to preach, or make attempts to man­u­fac­ture some wider sig­nif­i­cance for itself. It’s mis­chie­vous and nihilis­tic, but ele­men­tal enough that it invites deep­er read­ing. It presents the archi­tec­ture of a break­down while embrac­ing indi­vid­u­al­i­ty. It’s about diplo­ma­cy, the nature of dis­course and the impos­si­bil­i­ty of total agree­ment. Even when there are par­ties involved look­ing sole­ly at the long game, there will always be small, uniden­ti­fied rea­sons why things can fall apart spec­tac­u­lar­ly. There will always be win­ners and losers, whichev­er way you slice it.