"Gun Shy"is a comedy posing as an action film. It actually starts out as an interesting post-traumatic stress special agent story. But it is at the climax when it gets hilarious.
I was a big fan of the Alec Guinness comedies, including his "crime" films, "The Lavender Hill Mob" and "The Ladykillers." The cinematic style is different but the understated humor is similar.
Charlie Mayeaux (Liam Neeson) is an undercover agent suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. He is on a case involving an unpredictable psychotic killer, Fulvio (Oliver Platt). He is sure that he will die in this assignment. It's a follow up to an earlier assignment in which he was about to be killed when he was saved by his task force. All the bad guys were killed, except for one. The gangsters killed in that raid worked for Fulvio, and the DEA wants Charlie to renew his contact with Fulvio's people in the hope that Charlie will meet Fulvio (whom he has never seen except as imagined in his nightmares). They are less interested in catching Fulvio than having him lead them to the big drug cartel bosses.
I agree with the critics who complain that the ending of the film doesn't fit with what came before, but by then we know not to take the story as a serious one anyhow.
I was a big fan of the Alec Guinness comedies, including his "crime" films, "The Lavender Hill Mob" and "The Ladykillers." The cinematic style is different but the understated humor is similar.
Charlie Mayeaux (Liam Neeson) is an undercover agent suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. He is on a case involving an unpredictable psychotic killer, Fulvio (Oliver Platt). He is sure that he will die in this assignment. It's a follow up to an earlier assignment in which he was about to be killed when he was saved by his task force. All the bad guys were killed, except for one. The gangsters killed in that raid worked for Fulvio, and the DEA wants Charlie to renew his contact with Fulvio's people in the hope that Charlie will meet Fulvio (whom he has never seen except as imagined in his nightmares). They are less interested in catching Fulvio than having him lead them to the big drug cartel bosses.
I agree with the critics who complain that the ending of the film doesn't fit with what came before, but by then we know not to take the story as a serious one anyhow.