The Film (3/5)

Ben Wheatley goes all out with the gun violence in his action crime comedy thriller, Free Fire. Two gangsters, Bernie (Enzo Cilenti), and Stevo (Sam Riley) are on their way to meet two IRA members Chris (Cillian Murphy) and Frank (Michael Smiley) in a warehouse in Boston to buy some firearms from dealer Vernon (Sharlto Copley) who is there with his entourage Martin (Babou Ceesay), Gordon (Noah Taylor) and Harry (Jack Reynor). The mediator for this transaction is  Justine (Brie Larson). Things go wrong when Vernon supplies the wrong guns, AR-17’s instead of M-16’s. To make matters even worse, one of Vernon’s associates, Harry, had an altercation the night before with Stevo. Harry is the enraged cousin of a woman who Stevo abused and beat him up. Small world, isn’t it? The tension mounts, leading to gunshots between the two factions, plus poor Justine, the lone female in this movie, and Ord (Armie Hammer) who is the representative for Vernon. The rest of the film is basically gunshots, gunshots, and even more gunshots and to the survivor goes the briefcase with all that money for purchasing the guns.

Free Fire, while having some great gun violence for basically 90% of the film, and Ben Wheatley clearly having a blast directing the film at a feverish pace, but outside of the endless violence and a ton of profanity, the film lacked substance. The characters were vague; we don’t know much about these people or what the characters were planning, outside of the fact they were all criminals. The ending was pretty predictable.  It was billed as a comedy and I didn’t find anything very humorous, but I would venture with everyone being shot in the arms and legs, hobbling around trying to survive and escape could be some form of satire. There were a couple of unforgettable scenes including a head being run over by a van which reminded me of the Dario Argento Giallo classic, Deep Red, and also that in that same van, while a fight is taking place inside of it no less , has music playing, that of John Denver’s “Annie’s Song”. Okay that was pretty classic and even amusing enough to get a chuckle out of me.

Audio/Video (4.5/5)

Lionsgate presents Free Fire in its original 2:39:1 aspect ratio, in 1080p with an MPEG-4 AVC encode. The image quality is really terrific, as despite the entire film being in a warehouse and at night, this has some really rich, deep textures, and excellent details. The colors are bold, black levels are solid and flesh tones look true as well. This most likely had to do with the lighting for the film that takes place inside a warehouse. It’s actually pretty remarkable that it looks this good

The audio used for Free Fire DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and it’s pretty lively. The sounds of the gunshots are pretty intense and very aggressive sounding. The dialog, screaming characters and other noises come in loud and clear. 

Extras (2.5/5)

There are two extras included on this release; there is an audio commentary with Director Ben Wheatley, Cillian Murphy and Jack Reynor and, also a featurette called The Making of Free Fire

Overall (3/5)

While I wasn’t too terrible fond of Free Fire, I do know that there is a fanbase for it and they shouldn’t be disappointed with how it looks and sounds on Blu-ray. Plus, there are some good extras to make this package from Lionsgate a winner!