Holy shit. My ears are ringing. My living room is a mess and I think there’s popcorn in my shirt collar. I just finished… that. I just finished *Gunslingers*. I put it on Prime Video because the poster looked cool and honestly, I was just scrolling, you know how it is? You just click. And then the opening explosion happened and my cat shot off the couch like a rocket. I haven’t moved for two hours. I think my spine has fused with these cushions.
Okay, so the plot is… there? I think it’s there. It’s like a wet paper towel holding together a bunch of insane, beautiful, loud-as-hell action sequences. Something about a bounty, a corrupt mayor, a weird nano-tech gun… I don’t know. The details are a blur. But the FEELING. The feeling is just… pure, uncut adrenaline. There’s this one chase scene through a futuristic city that’s half Old West saloon and half neon-drenched Tokyo, and I was leaning so far forward I literally almost slid off the couch. My hands were sweating. I was a grown man, in his own apartment, physically reacting to a CGI motorcycle chase like my life depended on it. It’s ridiculous.
And that one shot. God, that one shot is gonna live in my head forever. The main guy, what’s his name, Jack? Doesn’t matter. He’s standing on a dusty ridge, sun setting, and he draws this revolver that looks like it was designed by Apple. It fires, and the camera goes into this insane, gratuitous slow-motion, and you see this chrome-plated shell casing, impossibly shiny, spinning through the air. And for a split second, it catches the orange light of the sunset and just… glints. It’s the most pointless, style-over-substance moment in the entire movie and I think it might be my favorite shot of the year. It’s so dumb. It’s so, so cool.
It’s making me think of being like, ten years old, running around my backyard with those cheap plastic cap guns. Me and my friend Tom would have these epic standoffs behind the lilac bush, shouting dramatic dialogue we stole from other movies. "Drop the six-shooter, you varmint!" We had no idea what we were saying. We just loved the *sound*. The *click-clack* of the plastic hammer. This whole movie feels like that. It’s just a kid playing with the most expensive toys in the world, making every single explosion and gunshot as LOUD as humanly possible. I remember my mom yelling at us for being too loud and…
Wait, where was I going with that? Doesn’t matter. The sound design on this thing is insane. I have a decent soundbar and I think I almost broke it. Every gunshot feels like it’s happening in the room with you. During the final showdown, I had to pause it because my phone was buzzing on the coffee table and the vibration felt like a grenade going off. I had to go get more ice cream. It was a necessary strategic pause.
But honestly, now that I’m sitting here in the quiet, the credits rolling to some forgettable rock song… was the story actually garbage? I mean, the villain’s motivation was basically “I’m evil and I want the thing.” The love interest had the personality of a cardboard cutout. I thought I was having the time of my life, but now that I’m trying to articulate *why*, I’m just listing explosions. Is that enough? Should a movie just be a series of really, really cool explosions? I feel like my film school brain is screaming at me that it shouldn’t be, but my lizard brain is just hissing with pleasure. I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m smart enough to figure it out right now. My brain is just scrambled eggs.
The lead actor, though. The guy who plays Jack. He’s not acting, he’s just… posing. He has exactly three facial expressions: Grumpy, Grumpy With a Hint of a Smile, and Grunting While Shooting. And it’s perfect. You don’t want him to recite Shakespeare, you want him to look cool while riding a robot horse. He delivers. He delivers in spades.
Whatever. I’m overthinking it. It was a blast. A loud, stupid, beautiful blast. I feel like I need to go for a run or something to burn off this energy. Or just watch it again. Yeah, I might just watch it again.
7.5/10
-Alex
Trailer English - https://youtu.be/G4hVWe4GOrk?si=x4IawyTz2ZJVsC3I
EXPLANATION english - https://youtu.be/hhljmSfSpso?si=Eb7Se6rj-LsZRGId