Free Fire
A24 | Release Date: April 21, 2017 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
63
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 39 Critic Reviews
Positive:
24
Mixed:
14
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
83
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyApr 20, 2017
If you’ve always believed that the climactic Mexican standoff in "Reservoir Dogs" should have been the whole movie, then you’ll love Free Fire. Read full review
83
ConsequenceSarah KurchakSep 16, 2016
Free Fire might be a trifle of a quippy, feature-length shootout, but it’s the best damned trifle of a quippy, feature-length shootout you’ll ever see. Read full review
83
The Film StageJared MobarakSep 10, 2016
A surefire cult classic in the making, its unhinged carnage proves a memorable delight. It may not be original, but it’s an adrenaline shot I sorely craved. Read full review
83
IndieWireEric KohnSep 9, 2016
Wheatley’s commitment to crowdpleasing antics makes it difficult to stop and consider the lack of depth. In a universe of shootout clichés, Free Fire manages to carve out its own niche, where the proverbial last man standing matters less than the journey to get him there. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesMark OlsenApr 20, 2017
Free Fire is a savagely funny and viciously precise distillation of one of the pair’s favorite themes: Men are idiots. Read full review
80
The New York TimesGlenn KennyApr 20, 2017
Free Fire is an action movie finely tuned to even the most potentially vicious audiences’ tolerances. It is filled with mayhem, but avoids grisly violence — at least until the finale pulls out some gory, and not inapt, punch lines. Luxuriating in disreputability in all the right ways, the film also contains no shortage of profane verbal wit. Read full review
80
Total FilmJames MottramMar 27, 2017
Loud, ripe, violent, bloody and blackly funny, Free Fire cocks its gun right in your face. See it – and bring earplugs. Read full review
80
Time Out LondonTom HuddlestonMar 27, 2017
It doesn’t entirely hold together; the relentless din and repetition flips from thrilling to exhausting and back again more than once. But in those moments when everything clicks...this is absolutely joyous. Read full review
80
The TelegraphRobbie CollinOct 19, 2016
Far more than his previous films, which tend to unfold in a dream-like daze, Free Fire is a mad contraption, bristling with bravado and black, sardonic wit. Read full review
80
EmpireHelen O'HaraOct 17, 2016
Wheatley continues an unbroken run of quality, helped by a great cast and a startlingly effective premise. This is seriously cool, stuffed with great dialogue and riddled with bullets. Read full review
80
Screen DailyWendy IdeSep 9, 2016
It’s a bruisingly effective piece of entertainment carried by comedy, which hits its targets rather more successfully than the wildly strafing bullets. Read full review
80
VarietyPeter DebrugeSep 9, 2016
The fact that they could all lay down their weapons and finish the deal heightens Wheatley’s generally irreverent approach, all of which serves to remind that guns don’t kill people; insecure, overcompensating idiots do. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliApr 24, 2017
Free Fire isn’t a “Reservoir Dogs for the 2010s” but there are enough similarities in approach, tone, and style to warrant a comparison. The violence, the cavalcade or profanity, the testosterone & adrenaline – they’re all present and accounted for. Read full review
75
Rolling StoneDavid FearApr 21, 2017
Free Fire may suggest Wheatley is deservedly moving up the industry food chain – it's executive-produced by Martin Scorsese – but it also merely a formal exercise, albeit one buoyed by the sense that the director is having the time of his life behind the camera. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzApr 20, 2017
This is a mostly fun, over-the-top ode to the siege movie, as well as a love/hate letter to all things firearm-related. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperApr 20, 2017
Either you’re in the mood for a series of gruesomely creative kills and lots of dark humor — or you’re not. Read full review
75
USA TodayBrian TruittApr 20, 2017
Hyperviolent, highly watchable action comedy. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleWalter AddiegoApr 20, 2017
Quibbling aside, Free Fire mainly works, as an indulgence in cinematic overkill for moviegoers who realize that sometimes too much is just enough. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeTy BurrApr 19, 2017
Because Free Fire is a essentially a comedy of bad manners — a bedroom farce that only happens to take place in a warehouse, with volleys of gunfire rather than slammings of doors — it’s a highly enjoyable 90 minutes, especially if your tastes run to the violent, the absurd, and the violently absurd. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineJesse CataldoApr 14, 2017
Ben Wheatley's film reduces the modus operandi of the action movie down to its starkest elements. Read full review
75
The PlaylistKevin JagernauthSep 9, 2016
With “Free Fire,” Wheatley wants to push his own limits of onscreen mayhem, taking things right to the line where most directors would pull back, and pushing everything right over. And what the director winds up doing is making a big, magnificent noise, one that will certainly see more than his core fanbase sitting up and paying attention. Read full review
70
Arizona RepublicBarbara VanDenburghApr 20, 2017
This cartoonishly violent exercise in cinematic hero worship comes at the audience with chambers loaded and fires off rounds too rapidly to worry about how vapid it all is. Read full review
67
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Apr 19, 2017
Fun, often funny, but about as disposable as an empty clip. We already have a Guy Ritchie. We don’t need another one. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovApr 19, 2017
Armie Hammer slyly steals the show as Ord, a very chill American arms dealer. Read full review
60
TheWrapClaudia PuigApr 20, 2017
Free Fire is an ultra-violent, gut-punching spectacle that borders on a slog. It makes you feel guilty even for enjoying minutes of it, and then empty after it’s all done. Read full review
60
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottApr 19, 2017
Free Fire frequently becomes a messy blur of ricochets and one-liners. Fortunately, the cast is appealing enough -- and the characters interesting enough -- to use those one-liners to maximum effect, thus holding things together reasonably well. Read full review
60
CineVueBen NicholsonSep 10, 2016
It might seem unlikely that something so narratively simplistic and ultimately childish could sustain its runtime but the chaos and comedy of the haphazard gunplay is such that it only suffers from a handful of lulls. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreApr 25, 2017
Free Fire falls short as a moral lesson or satiric statement, shorter still as a “Shoot’em Up” style ballet of bullets. Read full review
50
Washington PostAnn HornadayApr 20, 2017
With his cultivated air of nonchalance, the trivialized, consequence-free violence and reverse-engineering of a plot threaded with convenient twists and unexpected arrivals, Wheatley seems intent upon lowering the stakes at every opportunity. Read full review
50
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzApr 20, 2017
Free Fire is neither the best nor the worst of the Tarantino wannabes; at its worst, it's tediously unoriginal, and at its best, it's funny and reasonably involving. Read full review
50
New York Daily NewsJordan HoffmanApr 20, 2017
Free Fire is more of an exercise in how to stretch-out a single scene than a typical movie. Read full review
50
The Seattle TimesSoren AndersenApr 20, 2017
Its take-no-prisoners pacing [takes] it up a notch from the average low-budget shoot ’em up. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterStephen DaltonSep 9, 2016
Wheatley's riotous Looney Tunes action comedy is a sporadically amusing assault on the senses, but it looks like it was more fun to make than to watch. Read full review
40
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinApr 24, 2017
The result is reasonably entertaining and totally disposable. Which it shouldn’t be, given that its focus is on guns and the way that they facilitate mayhem. Gory farce can be bracing. It’s the glibness that’s unconscionable. Read full review
40
Village VoiceMelissa AndersonApr 20, 2017
10 minutes early to the Free Fire press screening, I grew restless as “Annie’s Song” played on a continuous loop in the theater; the gimmick filled up my senses with the quickly confirmed fear that Wheatley’s film would rarely rise above the dopey and obvious. Read full review
40
Time OutJoshua RothkopfSep 17, 2016
A too-pleased-with-itself action comedy. Read full review
40
The GuardianBenjamin LeeSep 10, 2016
There’s something lacking, a touch of the bizarre or the perverse, with just one particularly nasty death to serve as a reminder that you’re watching a Ben Wheatley film. Read full review
40
ScreenCrushMatt SingerSep 10, 2016
There’s a decent amount of craft on display, along with a filmmaker of genuine chutzpah. Throw just a little restraint into the mix, and you might really have something. Read full review
25
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonApr 20, 2017
The film is a criminal waste of an ensemble cast that should have found something better to do than lend their names to such a pointless exercise. Free Fire is a misfire. Read full review
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