Frenchman Pierre Morel is doing for Sean Penn what he’s already done for Liam Neeson – ie given him a big bag of weapons and free rein to use them on a selection of perps. The film that sees Penn’s potential transition from Serious Actor into Even More Serious Action Star is called The Gunman and it has a new trailer to show its wares.
Adapted from 1981 crime novel The Prone Gunman by Jean-Patrick Manchette, The Gunman will unleash the newly grenade-lobbing Penn on the shadowy figures trying to block his exit from their shady organisation. All he wants is a quiet life with his true love (Jasmine Trinca), and some time to recover from the PTSD he’s suffering from, but Javier Bardem’s operative and his goons stand in his path. Cue fisticuffs and some massive gun battles.
Penn, for his part, rejects our lazy action star tagging. “Calling it an ‘action film’ is kind of like calling Meryl Streep a sexy blonde chick,” he told USA Today in 2013. “She is, but that really doesn't tell the story of what she is at all. I don’t separate this in my mind from anything else I have done. It’s a very human story that deals with the same things exploited in action films, like warfare.”
See The Gunman when it hits UK cinemas on March 20, with Idris Elba and Ray Winstone also aboard.