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Canberra Today 21°/24° | Tuesday, March 19, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Review / ‘Free Fire’ (MA) *

“A WELL-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

It may fairly be stated that more US citizens have died in consequence of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution than its proponent James Madison could have envisaged in his worst nightmares!

“Free Fire” takes place in an abandoned Boston warehouse where, in 1978, two groups of bad guys have met to make an arms sale deal. The buyers have specified AK47 rifles. The vendors have offered US Army M16 rifles. And the initially unstated but quickly-implied objective of both groups is to come away from the deal with both goods and money.

That toxic combination has supported filmmakers for decades, including Martin Scorsese who’s credited as one of its 10 executive producers. I suspect that the intention of that inclusion may have been to add a mote of box-office cred to what is otherwise a boring film that writer/director Ben Wheatley reportedly intended to be a polemic against the effects of that Second Amendment.

For 91 minutes, the two sides blaze away at each other in a slow attrition until there’s only one participant still alive, who crawls away dragging the briefcase of money. Nothing else.

Boring. And in no way likely to have any effect on the film’s proposition against the obscene, hard-line policy of the American Rifle Association that in real life scares American lawmakers, Federal and State alike, to take a stand.

At Dendy

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Dougal Macdonald

Dougal Macdonald

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