Movie review: There's a weird South African subtext to 'Free Fire'

Free Fire takes place in 1978, and has the shoulder pads and paisley-patterned blouse to prove it. But the film's zeitgeist is turned to End Times. The callously uproarious new film from Ben Wheatley takes place almost entirely inside a tumbledown warehouse in Boston, US, where a delegation from the Irish Republican Army is collecting a shipment of assault rifles from a South African gun runner and his seamy associates.

The place looks like the aftermath of a nuclear attack: "Whatever they used to make here, nobody wants it now," observes IRA dealmaker Chris (Cillian Murphy) as he and his cohorts are led through the rubble towards their fateful rendezvous with Vernon (Sharlto Copley, operating just within the limits of stomachability) and his vanload of Beretta AR-70s.

The ground is strewn with glass and dust. The only things that matter inside are the weapons and money - lives come a distant third - and those are all present and correct: in short, there's absolutely nothing here worth fighting over. But that doesn't mean the two sides won't give it a try.

Wheatley's sixth feature is the kind of film you sense might have been made on a dare. Because when the arms deal goes south - as it inevitably, and almost immediately, does - the film devolves into a 12-way shoot-out which keeps blazing, yelling, limping and leaking blood right up to the final cut to black.

The challenge faced by the Sightseers and Kill List director is a testing one: bringing excitement, tension and purpose to what's ultimately an idiotic and pointless bloodbath. It's a heroic group effort, resoundingly carried off.

WATCH the trailer for Free Fire (warning: violence and explicit language)

Suave middleman Ord (a luxuriantly bearded Armie Hammer) and enigmatic facilitator Justine (recent Oscar-winner Brie Larson) are the closest things to sympathetic characters on offer. But when the bullets start swarming, they become as brutal and reckless as the more alpha-type scumbags around them.

Alongside Murphy on the IRA side, there's grizzled Frank (Michael Smiley, terrific) and dumb hired muscle Stevo and Bernie (Sam Riley and Enzo Cilenti), while Vernon's associates include Martin (Babou Ceesay), Harry (Jack Reynor) and Gordon (Noah Taylor), each of whom has his own agenda in play.

If you're wondering who the 11th and 12th participants are, know that Wheatley keeps a couple of wildcards up his sleeve.

The group's fashion choices are almost as loud as the deafening muzzle blasts and twanging ricochets filling the air. But while they enable some glorious visual gags (watch for a wispy puff of padding when one bullet tears through someone's shoulder), the outfits go beyond fancy-dress pastiche. These characters are clowns in the purest sense - rag-clad, outcast buffoons who deserve everything the universe has lined up for them - and the film delights in making sure they get it. - The Daily Telegraph

• 'Free Fire' opens in cinemas today.

• This article was originally published in The Times.