Ben Wheatley’s bang-bang shoot-em-up, Free Fire, hits theaters this weekend (my review goes up tomorrow if you
feel so inclined to check back), and as such, the director’s been on the press
trail. This means that there’s been ample opportunity for people to ask him
about his upcoming Freakshift, and the more he says, the
more a movie that already sounds unbearably rad keeps getting better and better.
The phrase “new Ben Wheatley movie” is more than enough to
grab my attention. So, as I wait for the British director’s Free Fire to drop early next month, I can’t help but look towards
Freakshift. It recently cast Alicia Vikander in the lead,
which is great and all, but Wheatley just dropped the best single-line
description I’ve ever heard.
Back in 2007, on the press trail stumping for The
Bourne Ultimatum, the third in the then-trilogy of espionage
actioners, Matt Damon appeared on The Daily Show. In the course
of the conversation, the actor said he and director Paul Greengrass, who also
helmed The Bourne Supremacy, joked that the next movie would
be called The Bourne Redundancy. It’s been nine years, with an
attempted franchise reboot sandwiched in the middle (2012’s lackluster
The Bourne Legacy), but with the simply titled
Jason Bourne, Damon and Greengrass finally delivered on that
promise, in spirit if not in name.
Does the world need another
Bourne movie? Probably not. But that doesn’t mean we’re not
getting one, and that doesn’t mean I’m not going to watch the shit out of
Jason Bourne when it drops this summer. That was going to
happen anyway, but with the first trailer hitting the airwaves, and looking
like what you hope to see from a movie about a badass amnesiac spy, I just
might get excited for this one.
If you’ve ever seen a Guy Ritchie film, especially the likes
of Snatch and Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking
Barrels, you won’t be surprised by what you get in his update of the
1960s spy serial The Man From U.N.C.L.E.. Fast-paced and
energetic, full of handsome heroes and a sultry villainess, and hyper-stylized,
this isn’t a particularly deep movie, but it is an entertaining espionage romp
that provides a decent amount of amusement.
