Fifteen minutes of quasi-earnest guff (replete with respected newsreader cameos) about corporate plunder, genocide, and bloody civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo justifies another 100 minutes of ammo-porn explosive action as Sean Penn “pulls a Neeson” under the guiding eye of Taken director Pierre Morel. Penn is the aptly named Jim Terrier, an ex-assassin forced to go “in the wind” after a high-profile killing, abandoning his true love (Jasmine Trinca), who promptly falls into the arms of slimeball Felix (Javier Bardem). But when hitmen come calling several years later, the newly humanitarian Terrier is forced to revisit his guilty past, with predictably runny/punchy/shooty consequences.
Penn has clearly been hitting the gym and spends a lot of time showing us his ripped-and-tanned torso as he explores another set of “very particular skills”. Mark Rylance does his best to look like he gives a damn as he chews the eye-catching scenery in a Barcelona bullring, but there’s little here for anyone to get worked up about. A novel by Jean-Patrick Manchette provides the source material, but the only real “auteur” here is Morel, for whom this is very much more of the same.
