400 Bullets | Blu-ray (Shout! Factory)
Director: Tom Paton
Cast: Jean-Paul Ly, Andrew Lee Potts, James Warren, Adesuwa Oni, Steven Blades, Spencer Collings, Wayne Gordon, Adam Sina, Thomas Smart, Tina Barnes, Eddie-Joe Robinson, Duncan Holmes, Jimmy ‘The Bee’ Bennett
Running Time: 90 min.
By Martin Sandison
Being a huge fan of Jean Paul Ly, especially the deliriously fun Nightshooters – I look forward to every project he does with excited glee. While working as a stuntman on such upcoming high profile projects as The Batman and Venom: Let There Be Carnage, 400 Bullets sees Ly in the lead role again for another UK low budget movie. To get it in there quickly; don’t expect the high kicking, tricking exploits of Nightshooters. 400 Bullets is a military actioner with a small amount of realistic hand-to-hand combat and gunplay. While watching the film I was in constant anticipation of Ly bringing the action, when he does in little spurts it’s satisfying, but I do wish I’d known he doesn’t break loose properly. The movie is a different kettle of fish from his usual type, and is a neat change of pace. And, after the initial disappointment for you the reader, I’m happy to report 400 Bullets is an entertaining, atmospheric film that reveals more talent in the UK movie scene.
Rana Rae (Ly) is a soldier manning an outpost in Northern Afghanistan, with only a friend and fellow soldier for company. When a cargo is ambushed near the outpost by Taliban, a surviving soldier Noah (Andrew Lee Potts, The Crown) takes refuge with Rana, with the Taliban after them. Soon the two realise there is something more sinister afoot, and must fight for their lives.
A neat twist in terms of Ly’s character is that he is a Gurkha, a Nepalese soldier known for their military skills, honour, and extremely hard training, that have been enlisted by the UK army for centuries. Gurkhas, like the Samurai, are unafraid of death. Ly shows this in a scene when he is tortured, and it’s some of his best acting. In fact, the movie contains his best performance to date. He captures the moral compass and compassion of Rana, alongside his sense of humour, very well. Potts also does a good job of conveying Noah’s desperation and toughness, while James Warren (The Gentlemen) as the baddie Bartlett convincingly chews the scenery and displays a deranged nasty streak. .
What impressed me alongside the acting in 400 Bullets is the establishment and consistency of atmosphere. Demonstrably low budget, the film only has a few locations. Yet the colour scheme, lighting and camerawork combine to create an oppressive feel, which helps ratchet up the tension and draws you into the plight of the two leads. Lots of low light, good use of colour filters, tracking shots and gunfire lighting up dark skies in this one. Writer/director Tom Paton (G-Loc) has a few features under his belt now, and looks to be one to watch for the future.
For the majority of the runtime, action when it does come is of the armed variety. There is some good editing and framing in the gunfights, but it’s a case of too much repetition in the way they are shot, and little invention in shot selection. Baddie fires in a mid shot, goodie fires in a midshot, cut to baddie taking hits. The low budget does show in these sequences too, with people firing guns that don’t seem to destroy the thing they are aiming at, like a truck for example. Thankfully with Ly on board the hand-to-hand combat is exciting.
The first couple of these are disappointing. Clumsily edited, there’s no bite, power or thrills to be had. Ly was not the stunt co-ordinator, which does go some way to explain the difference in style from his usual snappily edited, thrilling choreography. Thankfully as the film goes on the fights get better, with a midway point two-on-one showing off some good knife fighting and military-style brutal martial arts. After this fight it did dawn on me that Ly and Potts characters are not meant to be martial artists per say, they have just learned some techniques due to their training. The end two-on-one with Warren contains some great brutal stuff, with a vast improvement in editing and ferocity. Unfortunately, it felt a little like once the fight got going, it was over. While disappointing, it does chime with the representation of character and feel of the film.
400 Bullets comes with a bit of depth to its moral game as Ly and Warren are at different ends of the scale when it comes to honour. The film portrays this quite interestingly, however I did feel if there was a little more depth in Warren’s character it would be even more interesting. While the film is quite predictable, kudos must be given again to a team who have made an entertaining, immersive film with a low budget, that completely held my interest and had me rooting for Ly and Potts characters. As a change of pace for Ly it builds on his range as an actor, with Rana really being put through the ringer, physically and mentally. Go in with no expectations of this being a martial arts film, and you’re sure to have a fun ride.
Martin Sandison’s Rating: 6.5/10
Aw shucks I’m disappointed that this wasn’t better than this at least a 7 or 7.5, but I actually had a feeling that it wouldn’t have much martial arts or hand to hand fighting and especially of the same caliber as Jean-Paul Ly’s other work as he wasn’t the choreographer or stunt coordinator for this, but I’m surprised to hear that other elements of this film are good, like the acting and the atmosphere (which for a contained thriller like this is vital) all in all excellent review Martin, I’ll still prolly check this out but with tempered expectations now !
Thanks bro!
We definitely have different opinions on this one! For me I’d probably say a 3/10 is being kind.
‘400 Bullets’ main issue is its lethargic pace, which for long streches induces a similar feeling to watching paint dry. Jean Paul-Ly is clearly in a role that’s out of his acting range here, mistakenly thinking that wearing a blank expression for 90 minutes will convey his characters inner-turmoil. Either that, or he recently graduated from the Steven Seagal School of Acting. Onscreen, his performance comes across as lifeless and bored, with whatever brief bursts of action there are briefly giving the viewer a few seconds of false hope that things will improve.
Most embarrassing was a homage to ‘The Last Boy Scout’ (at least I hope it was), that has Ly tied to a chair by his captors while still being confident enough to threaten them. Ly just doesn’t have the gravitas of an early-90’s Bruce Willis, and the dialogue in the scene also seemed to contradict his character up until that point, which made it all the more grating.
The only good thing to come out of ‘400 Bullets’ will be if Wu Jing gives Ly a call for ‘Wolf Warrior 3’, and we get China’s finest versus a Gurkha, now that could be interesting.
Having finally seen this film, holy shit do I agree with this !
He’s my review for it: As a big fan of Jean-Paul Ly (having loved his previous work as fight choreographer/action star in “Jailbreak”, “Nightshooters” and his recent short actioner “Acere” directed by Youtube video essay legend Rossatron) I was very disappointed with how immensely underutilized he was in this film, considering that most of the story, genre and conceptual elements were there, including the strong presence of “Band of Brothers” Andrew Lee Potts and Guy Ritchie regular, James Warren as the film’s antagonist.
First of let me just say I’m not the kind of person that goes “those people’s reviews below me or above me have no idea what they’re talking about” you can see so for yourself in every other one of my reviews, and while I do think some of the points other reviewers have raised here in regards to poor production values, acting, lighting and action have a lot of merit, I also think they simply don’t understand the current state of independent genre filmmaking (particularly in the UK) and how low-budget it truly is, which in my eyes can be forgiven (to an extent, cause there are definitely some creative decisions made here, NOT budget-dependent that baffle me by how stupid they are) having been in the trenches a few times myself. I would actually argue that what they got away with here on a shoestring budget is rather impressive, with select few scenes inside the base being more than well lit and some genuine good direction, suspense and at times moments of humor that spiced up an otherwise, admittedly sour film, that neither completely becomes the manifestation of its genre or concept nor tries to say anything more intellectual about state of affairs in foreign conflicts, Veterans’ pay and whether or not the high risk in the battlefield is worth the extremely little reward during your pension. The film only brushes these concepts, and had writer/director Tom Paton decided on a more concrete approach to either genre fulfillment or genre deconstruction, the film would’ve come out far stronger. As such it just awkwardly sits in the middle ground, that fleetingly entertains and mildly makes you ponder. The performances are quite nice: what Tom Paton fails to draw from Jean-Paul Ly’s martial arts skills, he surprisingly gets a lot out of him in terms of acting, JP in my eyes (very fanboy-ish, subjective eyes, yes I’m not afraid to admit I love this man) has always had a lot of charisma and screen presence that made you root for the guy and the role he’s given here as an honorable Gurkha, Rana, with a strong moral compass but a very human dilemma, is probably the strongest aspect of the film in terms of story, character and theme. JP sells both the stoicism and dutiful loyalty of Rana while being incredibly vulnerable, doubtful and contemplative at other times, there’s a torture scene here where he has a conversation with James Warren’s Bartlett (who’s equally good in the about war, money and the value of honor in the face of abandonment by your own people) that honestly belongs in a better overall film than this.
However it is almost damn near inexcusable how badly they wasted some of the key talents of this cast and crew in this film, which is what truly brings this film down. Actor/Fight Choreographer Jean-Paul Ly is no stranger to one location action films where he’s free to put his superb martial arts skills on display, with both “Jailbreak” and “Nightshooters” showcasing exactly what this juggernaut is capable of, and to be fair, they were also quite low-budget affairs THAT STILL managed to get more exciting, adrenaline-fueled fighting action out of him than this film ever does in its entire runtime. I think the biggest problem here was that they decided to go for a more “realistic”, less martial arts-oriented approach to the fighting, which could have worked, if the fight choreography offered something truly new and unique (Jean-Paul Ly’s absence as the fight choreographer of the film is sorely noticeable) or if the camerawork was a bit more involved/energetic or if every fight wasn’t so repetitive and tiring each and every time. And mind you there’s not that many fight sequences in the film in total, so you’re left with a handful of fight sequences, that are mediocre at best to amount for maybe just half of the action. What’s the other half you might be wondering ? Shootouts ! Terrible, horrendously-helmed shootouts that consist of the most bland type of camerawork and editing in showcasing gunfights, yes I am talking of the infamous shot/reverse-shot of good guys spraying full-auto (yes these are military personnel using full-auto gunfire, missing majority of the time and the film still tries to convince you it has a “realistic” approach to the combat sequences after -_-) and bad guys getting hit, occasionally, the other way around. It was during these times that I honestly wanted to come back here, to these 1 star reviews, find the people who wrote them and high-five all of them in agreement, cause it is truly awful, even Paton’s previous film “Black Site”, which is the only other film I’ve seen of this director (I swear lol xD), featured a lot of hand to hand combat and fight sequences, mostly straying away from anything to do with guns and was better off for it. Now don’t take this the wrong way, I LOVE gunfights in films, over-the-top John Woo style HK gunfights ? love ’em. More tactical, slower-paced gunfights in today’s cinema ala “The Veteran” and “John Wick” ? love ’em, but the reason I love ’em is because they’re shot/edited in a way that is energetic, the gunfights have rhythm, layers and are a bit like the fight sequences where the movements along with the camerawork are almost like a choreographed dance and feel organic in their flow. In John Wick you can follow the characters as they go through an environment and understand that space geographically as well as knowing where bad guys are coming from, who’s shooting who and how are they being shot, in other words, you can see the shot, the impact and the bad guys dying almost in the same frame. Same thing in the HK action flicks, there’s clear, visible cause and effect on screen at almost any point. This is severely lacking in “400 Bullets” as the film’s low-budget rears its ugly head through the gunfights due to awful muzzle flash effects, equally as bad impact sparks and sound design that lacks the necessary punch to at least sell the gunfire orally. All of these issues amount to an action film that has the genre/conceptual strife of being the next “Assault on Precinct 13” meets “The Raid” (yeah just imagine how fucking awesome that sounds, and then imagine my disappointment with how mediocre this turned out), but ends up being a shallow imitation of both. You can gleam more from either of those films individually and you’d miss nothing from not seeing this, sadly.
What a shame.