‘Gunner’ Review – Luke Hemsworth and Morgan Freeman Action Movie Is a Mess

Filmmaker Dimitri Logothetis wasted talents like Nicolas Cage, Tony Jaa, and Frank Grillo on 2020’s astonishingly dismal Jiu Jitsu — what hope was there to believe he’d rebound with a Luke Hemsworth vehicle? Gunner is a sauceless actioner in the vein of ’80s and ’90s pulverizers, where inept henchmen are fed to a macho hero who explodes things. Don’t be fooled by Morgan Freeman‘s supporting role — Gunner is not on the acclaimed actor’s level (blink twice if you’ve been kidnapped, Mr. Freeman). The dialogue is cringy even by Universal Soldier sequel standards, performances more wooden than Pinocchio, and combat showpieces are a shambles of digital effects that spike not even a tingle of bruised and bloodied excitement.

What Is ‘Gunner’ About?

Hemsworth plays decorated Afghanistan veteran Lee Gunner (lol), who’s just returned home to Clinton, where he tends his wife Clarie’s (Yulia Klass) bar. Rowdy bikers and drug dealers hang around the establishment, doing business or throwing knives at dart boards. Lee smacks the snot out of some miscreants one night after they overstep, which means retaliation. While Lee’s camping with his two sons, teen-angsty Travis (Connor DeWolfe) and littlest Luke (Grant Feely), plus their Uncle Jon (Barry Jay Minoff), the group stumbles upon a Fentanyl pushing operation. Uncle Jon dies, Lee’s kids are taken, and the only one who can stop them is … well, the guy named Lee Gunner.

Logothetis and co-writer Gary Scott Thompson pen a dull script using only genre clichés. Gunner is one of those “drink if you’ve seen this before” movies, except if you obeyed said rule, you’d be a 30-rack deep before intermission. You’ll sample hits like The Sacrificial Family Member, The Bullheaded Supervising Agent, and The Invincible Protagonist like there’s a template to follow. The film’s foundation is a vulture-picked skeleton of an already anemic shoot-’em-up’s corpse. Logothetis’ genre vocabulary is repetitive and unrefined, cobbled together from stereotypes abused for decades.

Gunner is an unsightly mess, no matter what filmmaking aspect you analyze. Green screen backgrounds implement abysmal color correction, failing to fool anyone with faked driving scenes. Ammunition streaks and muzzle blasts resemble Adobe After Effects aberrations rushed through creation because the artist’s subscription was running out. Then there are the absurd edit cuts to ridiculous skydiving instances, remarkably unrealistic helicopters, and even character stuntwork that’s substituted for Z-grade digital junk. Logothetis’ team had better have struggled with both funds and timing because otherwise, there’s no excuse for what reads like a rough draft on camera.

‘Gunner’ Is an Action Movie Completely Lacking in Imagination

Maybe with better action chops, adrenaline junkies could see past the atrocious “story” development — but that’s not Gunner. There’s nothing imaginative beyond point-and-blast mundanity outside an early pub scuffle when Lee uses the dartboard to bash some leather-clad thugs. Where John Wick wields his blasters like a brush that paints artistic brutality, Lee Gunner boasts the pageantry of a shooting range dummy. Logothetis ignite a few fireballs when things go ka-boom, but even that mimics a child’s playset in comparison. Everything feels like a prototype never developed past notebook sketches, but production went forward anyway. There’s a very churn and burn quality to Logothetis’ style, which to call underwhelming is a drastic understatement.

The thing is, Hemsworth isn’t even to blame — the eldest brother is handed material written on a napkin. Lee Gunner is a D-List, Redbox-ass soldier boy who waves his medals of honor and squints his way through lines that would make three-movies-in Rambo blush. Mykel Shannon Jenkins is playing this fledgling daddy’s-boy villain with this maybe intentionally hilarious laugh, so bad that every time Dobbs Ryker cackles, it halts what little momentum exists. You get the sense that Logothetis tries to inject humor into Gunner, but the film’s inauthenticity renders choices like Ryker’s guffawing exceptionally out of place. The same can be said about Freeman’s usage in small doses because even he seems perplexed by the film’s inept tone while in character. Then again, maybe Jenkins is just trying to find any pulse of life because the rest of the cast deliver their lines like lifeless zombies.

Dig real deep, and you might unearth a redeeming quality in Gunner — but it’s not worth the effort. Logothetis is asleep at the wheel, resulting in shoddily edited shootouts set to public domain tracks that are more out of place than God himself showing up for a bit part. Cinematography wavers in quality depending on if there’s a location to shoot on, pacing skips like bumping into a record player, and whatever reverence Logothetis tries to show in that final scene towards American armed service members dies on the vine. Forget Gunner holding a candle to Jack Reacher because this movie desperately grasps at “watchable” status. You’ve seen this configuration of forgettable action nonsense before, and it’s been better almost every time.

REVIEW

Gunner (2024)

Gunner is a gross misuse of resources in an action movie that can’t even muster competent filmmaking techniques, resulting in a hideous bore of digitized shootouts and soulless performances built for the bargain bin.

Pros

• Morgan Freeman got paid (hopefully).
• Luke Hemsworth tries to salvage some fun as a vengeful father.

Cons

• Take your pick of criticisms. they’re all valid.
• It’s an action movie with no action spectacles to brag about.
• The entire thing scrapes the bottom of the barrel and feeds you the scraps.

Gunner is now available to stream on VOD in the U.S.

WATCH ON VOD