Most of Free Fire takes place inside in the same crumbling warehouse. The solitary setting could prove restrictive, but director Ben Wheatley (who also co-wrote the script with Amy Jump) uses the empty confinement to his advantage, and stages one of the most ridiculously fun — and well dressed, with Brie Larson, Sharlto Copley, Armie Hammer, Cillian Murphy, and Sing Street‘s Jack Reynor in over-the-top ’70s garb — gun fights you’ll ever see.
Wheatley told the sold-out SXSW crowd in Austin, where Free Fire made its U.S. premiere on Monday night, that more than 7,000 bullets were used during production. The first time Murphy fires a gun, it’s so loud, with the shot echoing off the warehouse’s walls, that it’s startling; 10 minutes later, it’s weird not hearing a bullet smack into someone’s leg or the dusty ground.
“It was really ambitious idea to shoot it all in once space because even though you only have one space, the devil’s in the details with something like that and you lose the geography of that really quickly if you’re not careful,” Hammer said. “Everything was so meticulously planned out.” It shows in the film, and even in the new trailer, which focuses on a deal gone bad.
Free Fire — which opens in the U.K. on March 31 and the U.S. on April 21 — is tense, funny, and most of all, super entertaining.
(via Entertainment Weekly)
