Can two of the hottest new names in film bring life to the overexposed city of Boston? Let’s find out!
Genre: Crime Thriller
Premise: A gun deal in Boston (1978) between the Irish and some local Bostonians goes horribly awry.
About: We’ve got a live one here folks. Everyone’s been telling me that this Ben Wheatley guy is the oak tree’s knees. I’ve been informed I HAVE to see his breakout movie, Kill List, a dark flick about a hitman. And that his upcoming High Rise, starring Tom Hiddleston (Avengers), is gaining a lot of heat as well. Free Fire stars Brie Larson, Armie Hammer, Cillian Murphy and Sharlto Copley. It finished production recently and is currently in post. Expect it in 2016.
Writer: Ben Wheatley
Details: 96 pages – unknown draft
I didn’t know who Ben Wheatley was until last week, when he started popping up on a bunch of web sites and people started e-mailing me that he was the best up-and-coming director since Tarantino. I knew Brie Larson of course. But after Room, she went into that upper stratosphere of actresses I will check out anything they’re in from now on. That girl’s going to win the Oscar.
So when I heard these two were doing a movie together, I just about flipped. Until I saw what movie it was: Free Fall. FREE FALL??? That vapid glorified beat sheet about a girl who climbs a mountain with her dad?? Nooooooooooo!!!
I was so depressed. Until I looked a little closer and saw that the project was actually titled Free FIRE. “Fire.” Not “Fall.” Oh, thank god. I can’t tell you how happy that made me. Time to find out if one of the buzziest projects in the industry is worthy all the hype…
It’s 1978. It’s Boston. Back in Ireland, the IRA is terrorizing the country. Frank and his underling, Chris, are a couple of Irishman who need guns to help fight that war. But this isn’t modern times where you can buy a snazzletooth L14 doppleslicer on Amazon and then 3-D print it four minutes later. They didn’t even have the internet back then. Which meant people had to buy weapons the old fashioned way – in sketchy warehouses in the bad parts of town.
Which is where Chris and Frank are. Accompanying them is Justine, a Swede who’s brokered this deal. Whereas everyone else is rough around the edges, Justine wears an expensive suit and looks as clean as a brand new 1978 Cadillac. Hell, she might even resemble the 1979 model.
On the flip side, they’ve got Steveo. No, not the half-retarded jackass from Jack-Ass, but he might as well be. Steveo’s already high on heroin when he shows up and sports a shiner from a mysterious run-in last night. Frank did NOT want Steveo on the team but he didn’t have a choice. They needed a man. Their usual guy pulled out. Call goes out to Reject #1.
The group heads into the warehouse. Leading the dealer side is a U.S. military man named Ord. He’s the kind of guy you want leading you down the trenches in Nam. His professionalism is downright intimidating, and he assures Frank that everything’s going to go smoothly and they’ll all be home with their children within the hour.
Wait a minute, Frank thinks. Since when were things NOT going to go smoothly? Why would they have thought otherwise? Oh yeah, we’re dealing with guns. LOTS OF GUNS. And when you deal with lots of guns, there’s always the possibility that something will go wrong. And something does go wrong. Frank was told that they’d be buying M-16s. But Ord has AR-18s, an inferior gun, instead. Frank’s pissed but they need these guns badly.
Meanwhile, one of Ord’s men, Harry, keeps eyeing a twitchy Steveo. There’s something familiar about this nitwit. The high-as-a-kite Steveo notices the attention and tries to play it cool, until Harry realizes where he knows him from. Steveo was part of a gang that bruised up his peeps last night, one of whom was Harry’s 17 year-old cousin. Harry starts chirping at Steveo, who swears he doesn’t know what Harry’s talking about, but the exchange gets louder and louder and, oh yeah, don’t forget there are over 200 guns sitting around…
I think you know which direction this safety switch is being flipped. Everyone scatters and a gunfight ensues. Like, the gunfight of all gunfights. To make matters worse, a third party starts firing AT BOTH SIDES from deeper inside the warehouse.
The. Fuck??? Who are they??? Nobody knows. But when everyone gets to cover and half of them are dead or dying, the sides will have to negotiate a way out of this mess, a task that no one seems up to. This gives us the distinct feeling that nobody’s getting out of here alive.
Let’s begin with Wheatley’s writing style, shall we? This might be the first professional screenplay I’ve read that was written on an iPhone. Contractions, capitalization, and punctuation (I’m talking essential punctuation, like periods) are scuttled in favor of text-like dialogue exchanges. Those of you who’ve gotten to know “Name” in the comments section and his infatuation with centering titles, would probably watch his head explode if he read this.
Now you may think I’d rip a script to shreds for this because that’s what I’d do if this were an amateur. So I’ve got to be fair, right? Well, I also know that this is a writer-director. And that means he’s not writing his script to get through the 15 levels of Hollywood “yeses” required before the script can be sent to a director. HE IS THE DIRECTOR. For that reason, fair or not, he doesn’t have to play by the rules. It’s the same reason Quentin Tarantino can make 800 spelling mistakes. His movie is already guaranteed 50 million for production the second he types the final period.
And hey, to be honest, I kind of dug this writing style. No, I don’t want you to adopt it. But dialogue is supposed to read quickly. And this text-approach without big letters and contractions and punctuation to muck up the words read super-fast. Since this was a dialogue-centric script, and since that style worked, I was liking what I was reading.
And in the end, all that matters is that the story works. And this story works. Not only that, but it’s unlike any script I’ve ever read. It’d be like if Martin Scorsese wrote a contained thriller. Ever fathom that? That’s exactly what you get here.
The script opens with a build. We’re building towards something important, and as each page goes by, the implication of just how dangerous this deal is grows. You know how I tell you guys to utilize an IMPENDING SENSE OF DOOM in your horror scripts? Imply that something bad is coming, then milk the suspense up until the point where you release the doom? Well, you can do that in any genre, and Wheatley does it to perfection here.
We get inside this warehouse and we can just tell something’s going to go wrong. Everybody’s so careful, but they’ve all got itchy trigger fingers. And itchy trigger fingers during a gun deal are liable to start scratching at some point. Bullet-scratching that is.
Remember back when I reviewed Jack Reacher? I told you that a scene that ALWAYS works, is to put two characters together who don’t quite know each other, and have one character cleaning or fixing or tending to a gun. The tension from that gun being in the middle of those characters brings the conversation alive. Because the audience knows that the potential for danger is just a flick of the wrist away. Well, Ben Wheatley has taken that concept and multiplied it by 1000. It isn’t just one small gun between our characters. It’s a couple hundred big guns.
With that said, when the giant gun fight finally begins (around page 40) and ends (around page 60), all of that built up tension is gone. We feel a bit like we’re laying around after sex. Sure, there’s the chance that the two of you could go again. But it’s not going to be as good as the first time, which was the release of an entire night of built-up sexual tension.
Indeed, these guys are talking back and forth with each other, trying to negotiate a solution, and we’re sort of like, “None of this is going to be as good as that earlier gun-fight.” What they needed to do was play up the mysterious third party A LOT MORE. Had they done that (and no, I don’t know why I’m referring to Wheatley as “they” now either), they might have had something to fill this new drama-free second-act void they’d created.
But the script excels in that it isn’t like anything else out there. Wheatley takes what’s typically a mid-script set-piece or a third-act climax and builds an entire movie around it. That’s forward-thinking and implies a storyteller who doesn’t see the world like the rest of us. If you can see the world differently from everyone else yet still see it in a marketable way, Hollywood won’t just let you through their doors, they’ll personally find you and drag you through them.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I have a plea for all future writers of crime screenplays. Please please PLEASE do not use Russians. Using Russians as bad guys is so beyond cliché at this point, it’s embarrassing. It was so refreshing to read a crime script without Russians for once. And yes, I get that it was set in 1978 where you wouldn’t see Russians, but still. Use anybody but Russians, or any Eastern European countries for that matter. You’re more imaginative than that!
What I learned 2: RELEASE THE DOOM! How do you build a story? Find a point in your screenplay where doom is unleashed (aka – a huge gunfight). Then retrofit your story to slowly build up until that moment occurs. As long as we feel like things are building, we’re going to stick around until you hit us with the doom.
