...a dull, emotionally inert, slog of an experience.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 21, 2022

Unfortunately, no matter how many beautiful locations are served up by the globetrotting plot, or how pumped-up Penn may look, the story is very familiar stuff, but without anything to set it apart.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 9, 2022

It is largely a clichéd scaffolding for certain violent set pieces, which are interesting as formal exercises of a kind, but have no long-lasting emotional or any other kind of impact, except to further inure audiences to killing and brutality.

| Feb 12, 2021

Thrillers don't get much more generic than this.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 2, 2021

One of the major components that hurts the picture is Sean Penn, who possesses no personality or charisma.

| Original Score: 3/10 | Dec 4, 2020

Everyone's gotta take a job to pay the bills once in a while in today's movie game. Even a decorated practitioner of the acting crafts like Oscar-winning method man Sean Penn.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Aug 11, 2020

The Gunman wants to be something much greater than it is. The political element is tacked on, the story is not nearly as intricate or clever as it thinks it is, and the whole film is drastically overlong.

| Original Score: C- | Jul 6, 2020

The Gunman is a propulsive and fairly well-crafted action film like its predecessor. Unfortunately, it suffers far more from its barely functional screenplay and plot.

| Feb 6, 2020

The Gunman is a plastic thriller void of suspense or charm, missing its mark entirely.

| Original Score: 1/5 | May 14, 2019

Though every step of the way the movie feels telegraphed and unsurprising, the good thing is Morel knows how to shoot and stage action scenes very, very well. The fights feel weighty and un-rushed, and some sequences are pretty inventive

| Original Score: 5/10 | Mar 14, 2019

The Gunman has plenty of big problems, but one of the biggest is the simple fact that its narrative doesn't really make any sense.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Feb 20, 2019

Despite the presence of those usually reliable actors, this is a film that is sunk by a leaky premise -- with Don MacPherson's adaptation of Jean-Patrick Manchette's novel a muddled mess of eye-rolling moments.

| Original Score: D+ | Jan 23, 2019

The Gunman also aspires to be a character study, but apart from wanting to sort out the situation around him and looking haunted, Jimmy himself is not depicted in a nuanced manner.

| Original Score: C+ | Dec 19, 2018

Looking back at the description, it sounds like a pretty interesting movie. Unfortunately, it is not. Even Sean Penn disappoints.

| Original Score: 4/10 | Nov 2, 2018

The Gunman not only falls short on the action itself, but it offers little else for the audience to enjoy.

| Original Score: 4/10 | Aug 30, 2018

Sean Penn is labeled as The Gunman but the gunplay is generic and does nothing to make this guy feel special

| Original Score: 1/5 | Dec 2, 2017

With no sense of scale, scope, story or how to shoot bruising action, Morel misses the target.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Nov 5, 2017

Directed by Pierre Morel, who also directed Taken, the action sequences are competent, but the tone of Morel's B-grade style action movies doesn't sit well with Penn's thoughts on globalization.

| Oct 17, 2017

Mostly ... you look at Penn, flexing his overly-gym trained torso in numerous shirtless scenes, and think, what led him to this point of desperation? Can he really be that jealous of Liam Neeson?

| Oct 17, 2017

[Pierre] Morel's uneven tone ironically matches the jarring plotline

| Original Score: D | Aug 16, 2017