Mark Reviews Movies: DIE IN A GUNFIGHT

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 15, 2021

Die in a Gunfight is mostly about attitude, and for the most part, that attitude is of the cavalier variety. It's a reflection, perhaps, of the story's protagonist, the spoiled but dejected son of a media tycoon, who has lived his life imagining that it's only a movie. He started getting into fights young and has never won a single one. The physical punishment, it seems, is the main point, as well as this kind of twisted romanticism. It's no surprise, then, that, when a character asks how Ben (Diego Boneta) would like to die, he's quick to offer the scenario of the title.

We don't really get to know Ben beyond his family, his history of getting beaten up with regularity, or his detached outlook and mopey demeanor. The guy's a mess and admittedly so, at least, and director Collin Schiffli's movie is nearly one, too, although its own veneer of cool prevents the movie from acknowledging that. Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari's screenplay attempts to do so much in terms of its story that it ultimately feels as if the movie hasn't done much of anything.

The story revolves around Ben, who's introduced in by way of an animated prologue and third-person narration. He's the son of Henry Gibbon (Stuart Hughes), who runs a TV news empire (His mother, played by Nicola Correia-Damude, is pointless in the tale, as is every other woman except two: One is the other central character, and the other is wholly disposable to complicate the plot).

The fighting—well, the beatings—started perhaps as a way to feel something in a life that was made up of ease, comfort, and destiny, but Ben never felt anything, really, until he felt love for the first and only time. It's telling—likely, unintentionally so—that the animated segment visualizes love as an object, separate from the young woman for whom Ben felt it. It is more an ideal here, since neither the relationship nor the main characters (especially her) really matter as much more than the idea that moves forward the plot.

She, by the way, is Mary (Alexandra Daddario), the sheltered daughter of William Rathcart (John Ralston), a technology mogul (The mother is played by Michelle Nolden, and again, she's not important to anything). The Gibbons and the Rathcarts have had a rivalry—a "blood feud," the narration asserts—that has lasted for generations. There are shades of Shakespeare's most famous star-crossed lovers in this. Shades, though, are about all the movie can support, since it has so many modes and plot complications and unfortunate coincidences through which to go.

Ben and Mary, who rebelled against her station in life by getting into trouble in school, had a whirlwind romance when they were teenagers, but it ended when William sent his daughter to a boarding school in Paris. Their communications were blocked or intercepted, so the two moved on with their lives. About a decade later, Ben and his best friend Mukul (Wade Allain-Marcus), whose life Ben saved after a failed suicide attempt caused him to fall on Mukul's would-be killer, crash a Rathcart party, and after gradually clearing up the old misunderstandings, their romance begins again.

That's the principal thrust, although a good chunk of this story is also about multiple plots and schemes within or just outside the lovers' orbit. It's always helpful when filmmakers more or less admit their central romance is shallow, ineffective one, by ensuring that the lovers can only talk about the obstacles to their love or in platitudes, while all of the real drama occurs around them.

That drama involves a whistleblower within William's company, whom the tech giant wants murdered, and the creepy stalker Terrence (Justin Chatwin), who works for William, is certain he deserves Mary, and hopes to convince the father to coerce the daughter to marry Terrence by solving the whistleblower problem. Terrence's hired gun is Wayne (Travis Fimmel), who coincidentally has an encounter with Ben in a bar and accidentally ends up in the middle of Terrence's scheme to do away with Mary's actual lover. The "joke" is that the assassin becomes a sentimental romantic when his wife (played by Emmanuelle Chriqui) is disposed of by the plot, just to keep the complications and final coincidences on track toward a predictable—and predictably violent—resolution.

Schiffli does invest Die in a Gunfight with a slick, stylish energy. Pretty quickly, though, it becomes apparent that the flash is just a transparent distraction from how little there actually is here.

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