Die In A Gunfight
A somewhat baffling attempt at intertwined destinies, and unavoidable violence.
Ben Gibbon (Diego Boneta) fell, many years ago, for the daughter of his rich father’s equally powerful nemesis. But when the two titans of industry discovered the young Romeo and Juliet, Mary Rathcart (Alexandra Daddario) was shipped off to Paris, where both she and her young lover equally felt abandoned and ignored by the other. While Mary slipped into drugs and alcoholism, and picked up a stalkerish bodyguard in Terrence (Justin Chatwin), Ben tried to off himself, only to pick up a best friend and loyal ally in Mukul (Wade Allain-Marcus). Ben’s brash behaviour and increasingly devil-may-care attitude lead to his banning from many events, but when he crashes one of the Rathcart do’s, he unwittingly stumbles into Mary once again - and their love rekindles, creating a ripple effect of violence that leads to the titular death.
Die In A Gunfight is an oddly dispassionate affair given the romantic entreaties of its lead characters. This is likely due to a blanket absence of quality performance or connection across the cast - no one here looks like they are doing anything but coasting for a paycheck, and no one is convincing in the slightest; least of all Boneta and Daddario as two young supposed lovers. Chatwin, too, is unconvincing as the stalkerish ex of Daddario’s Mary, and his eventual turn to true evil feels unwarranted, and mystifying. Really, the only one on pulling any weight here is Travis Fimmel as Wayne, a batshit crazy hitman with a ‘heart of gold’, whose sheer lunacy as an inclusion in this story gives him some leeway to bring some braggadocio to the role.
Visually, the film plays with some comic and western devices, but not nearly enough to define the tone of this piece, which too often slips into drab nothingness of cinema composition. From a narrative perspective, it doesn’t make sense in the slightest, even when providing grace for the out there premise. Dialogue of note or worth is sparse to say the least, and none of these characters is really filled in in any sense; controversies regarding the parents, slips of the children, backstories of the comrades, all come and go with the barest of explanations parsed out in comically cliche speeches. Perhaps most condemning is the fact that when the movie wraps up, and you can get your head around the whole plot, you realise just how little happened.
Die In A Gunfight is discombobulatingly poor. It feels like an unfleshed out skeleton of a script, waiting for the full body of the story to come to light. By no means is it unenjoyable; just cripplingly undercooked.
