Charlie Swift (Pierce Brosnan) is a former Marine turned crime syndicate fixer in Biloxi, Mississippi, who sticks together even in the face of his aging boss Stan Mullen's (James Caan) declining mental faculties. After a hit on a low-level criminal named Rollo on behalf of New Orleans crime boss Beggar (Gbenga Akinnagbe), Beggar soon stages an attack that leaves most of the Biloxi crew dead. Charlie teams up with Rollo's ex, Marcie (Morenca Baccarin), to find some evidence about Beggar that she had hidden in order to take down Beggar and avenge his crew.
Fast Charlie is an adaptation of the 2001 crime novel Gun Monkeys by Victor Gischler. Attempts to adapt the novel to film had been made as early as 2009 when director Ryuhei Kitamura was slated to direct from a script by Lee Goldberg, but it fell into development hell until producer Dan Grodnik acquired the project and resurrected it. as a directorial vehicle for Phillip Noyce with Richard Wenk of the Denzel Washington Equalizer films writing the script.
Director: Phillip Noyce
Writers: Richard Wenk, Victor Gischler
Stars: Pierce Brosnan, Morena Baccarin, James Caan
Now unceremoniously released on demand, one would be forgiven for thinking this was throwaway action material built around a cast of names. While Fast Charlie hits many of the touchstones of the hitman-adjacent action genre, it has a solid performance against Brosnan's type and a setting that sets it apart from the more typical urban settings of this type of film.
While I had reservations about Pierce Brosnan playing a redneck fixer for the Biloxi mob, he does a good job taking on the accent and, for the most part, I was able to buy Brosnan as an aging, tough fixer for a low-budget criminal enterprise. level. . Even though he is now in his 70s, Brosnan still exudes great charisma and charm and handles the action beats well enough that Phillip Noyce knows how to stage them. While the film includes romantic subtext between Morena Baccarin's Marcie and Brosnan's Charlie, at least Marcie is able to hold her own as a reasonably compelling character. James Caan is decent as aging mob boss Stan Mullen in his final role, but since the character is in the final years of his life, Caan can't really do much except act confused and the fact that he still seems to be central. For The Biloxi Mob's Operations, how this all works is never really addressed and is nebulously defined at best.
This really gets into Fast Charlie's biggest weakness because it feels like his noir story isn't fully developed and wastes its unique setting for a conventional revenge narrative. While the film is perfectly serviceable on that front, the film's opening with its quirky characterization of a man named "Blade" decapitating a guy with a donut loaded with a detonator or the need to identify a murder target through of a tattoo on his butt feels like remnants. of more peculiar and darker comedic material that Noyce and Wenk have decided to interpret in a more direct way.
I admit that I don't know much about Victor Gischler, but from what I've seen it seems that he is known for adding humor to his crime stories and since Noyce is more known for his straight action thrillers without comedy. name I really have to wonder if Wenk and Noyce were the right team to tackle this material.
As a performance piece for Pierce Brosnan, his central performance as Charlie Swift makes the movie, in my opinion, worth watching just once and has more ambition and personality than your average VOD action thriller of this type. That said, there are moments where the whimsy and absurdity of the original premise shine through and feel somewhat at odds with the direction Noyce and Wenk wanted to take this material and story elements, such as how the Biloxi mob continues to operate with head down. the faculties feel underdeveloped and could have served as a movie in themselves. A pretty decent time killer that looks like it could have been so much more.
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