Thank you and now, I shall present the Hemsworth effect for your appreciation which can also be called the Hemsworth trifecta or the Hemsworth trilogy. I’m still working on the name for this but there is a new phenomenon in action cinema where we not just have one Hemsworth delivering hard hitting action but we now have three. Chris, as we all know is the most famous of the three siblings because he plays Thor in the MCU as well as Tyler Rake in the Extraction franchise. He is worth many accolades however two of his brothers are catching up to him in the race to be the king of action film and this year in particular, we have watched Liam Hemsworth with one of the best action film Land of Bad which also had Luke Hemsworth in the supporting role and now the laddie is in the center playing the titular character of his new movie Gunner where instead of being a support he is the main focus of the film and his character is the title of the film. Seriously though, I am pretty convinced that it would be a cinematic masterpiece if all three brothers did a movie together in which they were action stars.
The film has its shortcomings as well such such as poor music choices during a lot of the action scenes in the film and some poor GCI effects like muzzle flashes, blood, and explosions one even including a ridiculous parachuting one as well as many used and abused action movie clichés but with all that being said, Gunner is still a more than decent old fashioned black ops movie with a sense of style and action where Hemsworth is Luke, the author of Ly Lee’s another action hero who used to be a green beret and now is a private sector mercenary. You just gotta love when the following characters last name is a title of the very movie, because that right there tells you that, that is a name associated with someone who’s got ‘kick ass’ skills and all the bravado that goes with it.
As we return to Lee’s family life, such description does not make things any better for Lee as all his years of service have depleted his marriage and turned his teenage son into a ‘stranger’ where there was once a cohesive relationship. Yet another downside is when his oldest son does come back, it is only to suffer the consequences of Kenneth’s ‘accomplishments’ whereby old age and military service and the Afghan war eventually consumed him. After the mission, Lee was taken prisoner in a deployment, and without any backup, he was able to release the entire fire team before they all became hostages. Lee was in captivity for many months, and of course he came back but the memories still haunt him everyday. In spite of all this, Lee has two loving children and wishes to develop a relationship with them without aggravating the situation with his ex-wife.
All hell breaks loose and I mean that in its literal sense when what was supposed to be just a camping weekend with the boys and his brother in law Jon becomes something else completely, quite involving their accidental discovery of an enormous ‘weed factory’ in the woods belonging to a certain Dobbs Ryker whom we recognize from Undisputed 3: Redemption. Unfortunately for Dobbs, that was not the first rank as its authority belonged to his father Kendrick Ryker as it was Morgan Freeman who played that role, however due to unfortunate circumstances daddy ended up in prison so the son had to take over the family business for Clark.
When Lee, Jon and the boys set off an explosion, Jon is killed because of the blast and Lee has to go into one man army beast mode to rescue his sons and kill Dobbs and the Asian gang hired by the Ryker family. Ah yes, Dobbs takes Lee’s children hostage too which presents a few moral dilemmas and heroic moments. Don’t worry though, Gunner is an elite spec ops warrior who just happened to earn a Medal of Honor for saving the whole team in the Middle East. For the last two/thirds of the movie, Gunner relies on doing what he does best: launching into hand to hand combat, endless gun fights and actually doing stunts.
This retro mayhem is managed by Dimitri Logothetis who has previously directed both Alain Moussi and Jean-Claude Van Damme in the Kickboxer Reboot series as well as the sci fi movie Jiu Jitsu also starring Moussi. Logothetis is aware of audience satisfaction and in relation to Gunner, he is able to offer polish and glamour albeit on a shoestring budget and some nasty effects that come with it. Where this movie falls short on any necessary embellishments, one will be surprised how the absence of those helped them focus more on raw, mean, basic action design as well as a whole lot of chest pumping and asses kicking.
This is the first action movie for Luke and he is quite capable in the lead role, in fact throughout the movie, I constantly got the impression that he behaves and talks like action film actor Thomas Jane. I hear Jane in his voice and see Jane with this mannerism and that is perhaps the biggest compliment I could give Luke since Jane happens to be one of my all time favorites. Luke fits the character’s physical appearance, performs all fighting scenes realistically and the character has quite a nice chance to demonstrate some very cool close quarters combat. I’m not gonna lie as I would love to see Luke play Gunner in more movies in the future as he has commanding presence and action chops.
What can you say about Morgan Freeman. Even being just for such a limited time in this film is nothing short than a major grand slam and freedman is one of such people in Hollywood who are able to make a even worst movie which they are in better. Luckily Gunner isn’t bad so the fact that Freeman is in it only makes it better. It also helps that Freeman’s Kendrick and Hemsworth’s Gunner had some sort of developed relationship in the last third of the movie and it was one of the highlights with the two of them in a single shot.
In the case of Undisputed 3, the fault lies with Mykel Shannon Jenkins since he is the real bad guy here and just like Freeman, he does a more than decent Dobbs. Well, he is a drug dealing piece of shit no doubt hindering on war lord asshole yes with kids no less. After all, you see monsters and he is not one. Very often, the antagonist is not worth the hero and in this case it’s the opposite. Dobbs is a worthy challenge to Gunner and the two exchange blows as they wrestle on Hairy’s chopper towards the end.
At this point, it’s the show that everyone has come waiting to see and I am very happy to say that Gunner performs to the maximum with three distinct sets that use everything you would expect from a perfect action film. You get bloody gunfight (even though it’s CGI) this pretty cool tracer fire during the gunplay and some martial arts moves thrown in considering the biker gang is Asian so empty hands choreography has to be followed because it’s a law. People like Hemsworth remind me of the action heroes of the past in particular Stallone and Schwarzenegger and I have a feeling he could be the next Kurt Russell of this generation if everything goes well with his new movies. Hemsworth pulls off the design well that is required of him and makes it look cool and in your face and the middle part is probably the best of the three parts he got to do a little of everything. There are some thrilling individual movements and an abundance of blood should be available during the course of the proceedings that will suffice to the action enthusiasts who want to scratch that itch. There is a place in my action films for a single-handed killing machine that is why a few of them brought a smile to my face and here I was smiling a lot.
Gunner also provides Hemsworth with a sequence cut – this time it is about breaking into a prison, as his brother Chris did in Extraction 2. This scene also doesn’t have that bombast or that grab the viewership by the collar and shake them sort of action for hours, but it is ok.
As I have said before, some music choices in Gunner are strange and I felt that it somewhat took me out of the action. It’s unfortunate as there is a good cinematic style action score inside this people front, however Logothetis’s tastes less desirable, combining bad 70’s music and even hardcore hip hop into his battle film. I do not understand why they consider this way is better, but the good news is that the end does not have any of that and we actually get the score. I think the first encounter between Gunner and several deadly women was not as impressive as it should have been because of the weird music warmup which became very popish. It made me want to squirm.
In all honesty, Gunner offers nothing new plot-wise and resorts to familiar tropes that we all know and love such as the abduction of these kids, a male lead grappling with questions of his past and stock villains that serve no other purpose but to be killed by the protagonist. To all this, I say who cares. Whenever you watch the Gunner trailer, one literally knows what to expect and I expected a lot. A lot of things in Gunner. I wanted to see things go kaboom, bad_guys get wiped out, and Gunslinger kickass, even without a gun, because he has guns for arms – which is exactly what I got.
Watch free movies on Fmovies
