Review: Son of a Gun
Alicia Vikander, the young Swedish actress, has been one to watch since her impressive performances in Pure and A Royal Affair. In the former, she played a troubled teen who engages in a relationship with a married conductor; in the latter, the young queen Caroline Mathilde torn between duty and passion. Vikander is a beauty - the camera loves her - but she also possesses an intensity and toughness that nicely oppose the vulnerability of her looks.
Vikander is probably in no more than 30 minutes of Son of a Gun's almost two-hour duration but she nearly upends the movie, finding nuance in the deeply stereotypical role of the hard-as-nails but kindhearted mobster's concubine Tasha. Before she shows up in the film's second act, let's rewind to the beginning. Nineteen-year-old JR (Brenton Thwaites) has been thrown into jail for reasons left unexplained. He's fresh meat for the hardened inmates, some of whom bully and nearly rape him before fellow jailbird Brendan Lynch (Ewan McGregor) takes him under his protection.
JR's safety comes at a price - once he serves out his six-month sentence, he's assigned to hijack a helicopter and break Brendan and two of his mates out of prison. Once freed, Brendan reunites with Russian mob boss Sam Lennox (Jacek Koman), who convinces him to pull off one last heist: stealing four million dollars worth of gold bars from a smelting plant. Naturally things don't go as planned, what with Sam's hotheaded footmen proving a liability, friction between Brendan and Sam increasing, and JR and Tasha's blossoming relationship a particular thorn in Brendan's side. Cue the double and triple crosses.
Son of a Gun is a promising debut for director Julius Avery, who can certainly stage a nifty action sequence. Both the prison break and the gold mine heist are well-paced and sharply edited. There are moments in the second act - especially during JR and Tasha's "first date" - that feel like a Michael Mann film with their fatalistic hum. Then the third act rolls around and the film falls apart. The dialogue and plotting, their weaknesses held to the backburner by the action and performances, come crashing to the forefront, laying bare all the clichés, stereotypes and genre tropes. The finale is especially confusing as it seems patched on from another lighter heist caper.
Still McGregor and Thwaites, both taking on out-of-character roles, do solid work even when their characters' motivations make less and less sense. Supporting players Matt Nable and Nash Edgerton give good glower as two of Brendan's crew.
Son of a Gun
Directed by: Julius Avery
Written by: Julius Avery, John Collee
Starring: Ewan McGregor, Brenton Thwaites, Alicia Vikander, Jacek Koman, Nash Edgerton, Matt Nable
