The Gunman - Sean Penn's Muscles Kill Bad Guys

Marter

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The Gunman - Sean Penn's Muscles Kill Bad Guys

Sean Penn tries to do the "aging action hero" thing and more or less pulls it off.

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NinjaDeathSlap

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Having just watched the BBC adaptation of Wolf Hall, I was very surprised to see Mark Rylance mentioned in here. Not surprised that he's getting work, but surprised that he's not getting better work. Seriously, a man who can upstage Damien Lewis, when Damien Lewis is playing Henry VIII, has no business wasting his time in a boilerplate Dad Movie.
 

Albino Boo

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Personally I would pay good money to watch Sean Penn being hit around the head with a shovel for an hour and half.
 

Skatologist

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Wait that was last week. Well, it's not like it's any less true today. >:)

Marter said:
Jasmine Trinca is here to be the love interest and the damsel in distress, in that order.
Are there times when it isn't in that order for those kinds of characters?
Marter said:
The Gunman is another one of these movies that doesn't want to do anything interesting with its female characters.
That's dangerously close to you expressing disagreeable political/social opinion on the state of current action movies. Well, at least you were employed here for a week. Now let me prep my flame shield if anyone else notices you wrote that.
 

remnant_phoenix

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Skatologist said:
Marter said:
The Gunman is another one of these movies that doesn't want to do anything interesting with its female characters.
That's dangerously close to you expressing disagreeable political/social opinion on the state of current action movies. Well, at least you were employed here for a week. Now let me prep my flame shield if anyone else notices you wrote that.
Ninja'd. As soon as I read those words, I thought, "Oh, here it goes..."

Come on, Escapist. Prove us wrong.
 

Fappy

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remnant_phoenix said:
Skatologist said:
Marter said:
The Gunman is another one of these movies that doesn't want to do anything interesting with its female characters.
That's dangerously close to you expressing disagreeable political/social opinion on the state of current action movies. Well, at least you were employed here for a week. Now let me prep my flame shield if anyone else notices you wrote that.
Ninja'd. As soon as I read those words, I thought, "Oh, here it goes..."

Come on, Escapist. Prove us wrong.
Skat was be sarcastic, just so we're clear...

>.>
 

remnant_phoenix

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Fappy said:
remnant_phoenix said:
Skatologist said:
Marter said:
The Gunman is another one of these movies that doesn't want to do anything interesting with its female characters.
That's dangerously close to you expressing disagreeable political/social opinion on the state of current action movies. Well, at least you were employed here for a week. Now let me prep my flame shield if anyone else notices you wrote that.
Ninja'd. As soon as I read those words, I thought, "Oh, here it goes..."

Come on, Escapist. Prove us wrong.
Skat was be sarcastic, just so we're clear...

>.>
I know he was being sarcastic, but that doesn't mean that the threat of someone making a big deal out of Marter's original sentiment won't happen. Hell, there have been a number of instances where a random lurker will create an account just to post flames.

Then again, I guess it wouldn't be fair for me to direct my comment at "the Escapist" in that instance would it?

I should've given more thought to my post. My bad.
 

Fappy

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remnant_phoenix said:
Fappy said:
remnant_phoenix said:
Skatologist said:
Marter said:
The Gunman is another one of these movies that doesn't want to do anything interesting with its female characters.
That's dangerously close to you expressing disagreeable political/social opinion on the state of current action movies. Well, at least you were employed here for a week. Now let me prep my flame shield if anyone else notices you wrote that.
Ninja'd. As soon as I read those words, I thought, "Oh, here it goes..."

Come on, Escapist. Prove us wrong.
Skat was be sarcastic, just so we're clear...

>.>
I know he was being sarcastic, but that doesn't mean that the threat of someone making a big deal out of Marter's original sentiment won't happen. Hell, there have been a number of instances where a random lurker will create an account just to post flames.

Then again, I guess it wouldn't be fair for me to direct my comment at "the Escapist" in that instance would it?

I should've given more thought to my post. My bad.
No prob!

I don't think Marter's popular enough to garner that much attention, anyway.

 

thehorror2

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I would've been down for this, if it wasn't for Sean Penn. Guy's a scumbag, and I won't give money to see anything he's in.
 

Darth_Payn

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I still don't buy Sean Penn as an action hero, or even a non-annoying person. But that's putting it mildly, when you learn the shit he used to do.
 

Darks63

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thehorror2 said:
I would've been down for this, if it wasn't for Sean Penn. Guy's a scumbag, and I won't give money to see anything he's in.
I second this. I can usually rise above my hate for an actor but for some reason with him I just can't.
 

DayDark

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thehorror2 said:
I would've been down for this, if it wasn't for Sean Penn. Guy's a scumbag, and I won't give money to see anything he's in.
Maybe I'm out of the loop, but what did he do?
 

thehorror2

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DayDark said:
thehorror2 said:
I would've been down for this, if it wasn't for Sean Penn. Guy's a scumbag, and I won't give money to see anything he's in.
Maybe I'm out of the loop, but what did he do?
It's OK. It was back in the 80s, so I didn't find out myself until I read about it elsewhere, but he was dating Madonna, and he tied her up and basically held her hostage in her own apartment for days. Cracked article for reference, which contains its own links: http://www.cracked.com/article_20560_5-beloved-celebrities-everyone-forgets-did-terrible-things.html
 

Darth Rosenberg

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thehorror2 said:
I would've been down for this, if it wasn't for Sean Penn. Guy's a scumbag, and I won't give money to see anything he's in.
What he did was obviously awful, but that was in, what, '87? And it's now 2015. Unless he kept repeating that kind of behaviour, isn't it fair to just let the past be in the past, and judge him as he is now?

...okay, you might still think he's an arse, but that'll probably be for his various ramblings about politics'n'stuff. People make mistakes, some of them pretty darn major - but they shouldn't be defined by those events for the rest of their lives.

As for the film itself: I kinda want to see it, just to see if I can spot something in the direction or script that reveals just how the hell it got Penn and Bardem involved in it...
 

thehorror2

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Darth Rosenberg said:
thehorror2 said:
I would've been down for this, if it wasn't for Sean Penn. Guy's a scumbag, and I won't give money to see anything he's in.
What he did was obviously awful, but that was in, what, '87? And it's now 2015. Unless he kept repeating that kind of behaviour, isn't it fair to just let the past be in the past, and judge him as he is now?

...okay, you might still think he's an arse, but that'll probably be for his various ramblings about politics'n'stuff. People make mistakes, some of them pretty darn major - but they shouldn't be defined by those events for the rest of their lives.

As for the film itself: I kinda want to see it, just to see if I can spot something in the direction or script that reveals just how the hell it got Penn and Bardem involved in it...
If he'd cheated on her I'd say sure, let it be in the past. But HE HELD HER CAPTIVE IN HER OWN HOME FOR DAYS. That's not the kind of sick in the head you grow out of. Sure he might not do it anymore, but if you do something like that ONCE you've got problems the rest of us don't have. But enough about how much of a dick Sean Penn is.

RE your second comment, I'd bet they got involved in the production because making action movies (that aren't just CGI stupidfests like Transformers) is a really fun thing. You get to see stuff blow up, stage fight scenes, get in crazy shape (which is lots of fun if you have the time to do it right) say tough guy lines that people in real life would throw stuff at you for, AND you make bank off of it. (Even extras do alright unless the producer's being a real tightwad) Whatever they are, Penn and Bardem like money and like having fun.
 

Darth Rosenberg

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thehorror2 said:
If he'd cheated on her I'd say sure, let it be in the past. But HE HELD HER CAPTIVE IN HER OWN HOME FOR DAYS. That's not the kind of sick in the head you grow out of. Sure he might not do it anymore, but if you do something like that ONCE you've got problems the rest of us don't have.
Eh, each to their own. I disagree, and reckon everyone deserves a fair shake as well as forgiveness if they're genuine about not repeating their mistakes, no matter what they've done. Good people can do remarkably awful things.

I know very little about Penn as individual, but if a guy like Terrence Malick's prepared to work with him, then I'm more than prepared to cut him some slack.

Whatever they are, Penn and Bardem like money and like having fun.
True, but they seem like actors who could've held out for something a little more credible... It's not like they don't have good connections. The film, so far, has tanked, and generally been torn apart by critics.

Apropos box offices, here's a quote from Variety:
The Gunman has good company. Over the past two weeks, testosterone-fueled entertainments like Run All Night and Chappie have collapsed at the box office, while Cinderella and Insurgent have soared.

"It's an interesting dichotomy," said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Rentrak. "Women are driving the box office right now."
Gotta love 'analysts'. That doesn't look like women particularly driving the market, that looks like people knowing turkeys when they see one, and/or getting sick of Old Guy Does Action stuff (Run All Night and The Gunman ostensibly seem interchangeable). Not seen Chappie yet, but from what I've heard, I'm not surprised it wasn't exactly a hit.
 

Kahani

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Marter said:
the "aging action hero" thing
The big problem is that this shouldn't be a thing at all. The whole point of Taken was that it was somewhat surprising and different - instead of having a big pile of oiled muscles running around with their shirt off, you had a middle-aged family man flipping out and murdering everyone. It was a fairly generic action film built around the idea of having the wrong actor playing the wrong character as the star. It hasn't worked since then because it's no longer different or surprising. "Liam Neeson doing exactly the same as in his last film" is not the sort of shocking twist that's going to rake in the viewers, and "Different old guy does exactly the same as Liam Neeson" isn't really an improvement.

I'd also argue that it's not really "ageing action hero". That tends to imply an action hero who has aged - Arnie, Stallone, and so on - rather than an ageing person who is suddenly trying to do action.