Son of a Gun, 2014.
Directed by Julius Avery.
Starring Ewan McGregor, Brenton Thwaites, Alicia Vikander, Jacek Koman, Matt Nable, Tom Budge and Nash Edgerton.
SYNOPSIS:
JR busts out of prison with Brendan Lynch, Australia’s most notorious criminal, and joins Lynch’s gang for a gold heist that soon pits the two men against one another.
Sound the alarm; it’s the POINTLESS FILM ALERT!
We’ve been down this road many times and probably too often than we should have. There’s this young guy and he’s a good kid in general but, wouldn’t you know it, he made a few wrong life decisions and here he is in jail. Along comes a career criminal and his gang to use the kid to get what they want (freedom, money, the usual) and maybe a friendship is made and broken along the way.
Son of a Gun offers nothing new to the landscape of crime thrillers other than lending a unintentional helping hand in solidifying (if that were even needed) how great other recent movies are which make up the sum of this one’s parts. Instantly you think of the gritty prison movies like Starred Up or Un prophète which took their material far more seriously and not as a set piece, or heist movies like Heat, The Town, or The Score where the heist was the part of the story’s DNA and, again, not a set piece which some and goes. As for surrogate father-and-son crime tales look no further than anything by James Grey for the real substance this film lacks.
Is it fair to compare Julius Avery’s debut directorial effort to the masterworks of Michael Mann, James Grey or Jacques Audiard? Not necessarily, but one need only look at the originality in the film making and characters on the page from such directors to see how vague and uninspired Son of a Gun really is. After initial promise in the prison scenes the film rapidly loses its grip and makes way for stock characters and a terribly strained romance which never once feels believable. It doesn’t help that Ewan McGregor is miscast and barely gets out of ‘script rehearsal’ levels of commitment, but he shines in comparison to the biggest problem in the casting of the lead. Brenton Thwaites is fine as the scared young man in the prison scenes but once the action moves away from this setting his limitations as an actor are painfully apparent. Too much is asked of him to carry a film which aims to deliver high levels of drama and relationship struggles; he simply is not up to it.
Where Avery’s film works is in the production value of such a modest budget. He makes the most his surroundings and a helicopter escape sequence was surprising to see (even if it never felt believable) and his faux-Michael Mann style may be enough to please most audiences looking for positives from their £10 ticket, but it wasn’t enough for me to recommend. Essentially Son of a Gun is looking for a place in a genre we’ve seen too often and delivered substantially better than this.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Rohan Morbey – follow me on Twitter.
