“Guns Up” tells the story of a well-meaning family man who ends up taking a job as a mob henchman, whose attempt to leave that life for good leads to him being attacked by waves of goons who have to be mowed down in various brutal ways. In essence, it comes across like a mashup of “John Wick” and “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” and even features the latter’s star, Kevin James, as its lead. As concepts go, this is so patently absurd that it might lead you to assume that the entire film is a broad spoof of the recent strain of films in which seemingly amiable people turn out to be deadly killers. While there are several problems with the film as a whole, perhaps the central one is that there are long stretches where viewers are expected to take the concept at least somewhat seriously, which proves impossible.
Five years ago, despairing over his inability to provide a good life for his wife, Alice (Christina Ricci), and their two children, Siobhan (Keana Marie) and Henry (Leo Easton Kelly), Ray Hayes (James) decided to work for the local mob as a debt collector. Happily, he doesn’t have to break too bad because the crew he hooks up with is about the warmest and fuzziest outpost of the Jersey mob imaginable—the head, Michael (Melissa Leo) insists that she only works with people who follow a certain ethical code, her right-hand man, Ignatius (Luis Guzman), is given to quoting the likes of John Quincy Adams. Most importantly, they insist that whenever Ray wants to leave their ranks for good, it will be with no questions or repercussions. Alice is aware of and even approves of Ray’s profession, though they choose to keep the kids in the dark, letting them think that he is still a cop.
As it turns out, not all mob crews in Jersey are as cuddly, and, before long, Michael’s gang is taken over by the far more ruthless Lonny Castigan (Timothy V. Murphy). This inspires Ray to quit the life for good—he and Alice have been making plans to open up a diner—but it turns out that Lonny is not quite as understanding when it comes to people in his employ trying to leave him. In desperation, Ray tries to do one last job that he thinks will ensure his freedom, but it ends up going sideways and makes him a target for Lonny’s goons. When they decide to go after his family as well, the fight shifts to the home front as Ray shoots and stabs his way through waves of would-be killers to protect them.
While watching the film in a state of increasing disbelief, I found myself thinking of, of all things, Paul Thomas Anderson’s wonderful “Punch-Drunk Love”. In that film, you will recall, Anderson had the idea of taking Adam Sandler and his screen persona at the time—an allegedly sweet goofball with barely masked anger issues—and putting it in the service of a narrative that explored this behavior with more wit, nuance and depth than what tended to be on display in the likes of “Billy Madison” and “Happy Gilmore.” If one wanted to be charitable, “Guns Up” could perhaps been seen as James’s attempt to do something similar by taking a premise and character that could have served as the basis for one of his broad comedies and approaching it in a considerably darker manner as a way of building further upon his more-than-credible dramatic turn as a violent escaped criminal in 2020’s “Becky.”
Unfortunately for James, while Sandler was lucky to have a filmmaker with the pedigree of PTA on his side as he made his leap, James has been saddled with Edward Drake, who served as the writer and/or director of no less than nine of those increasingly sad cut-rate action spectacles that Bruce Willis ground out towards the end of his career. The screenplay is a bizarre clash of tones that often wants to be taken seriously, but also includes jokes that always feel forced and strained, especially once the bullets and body parts start flying. We never buy Ray for a second, and the script seems to be going out of its way to avoid coming across as plausible.
However, he seems fully fleshed out in comparison to the other characters, who come across as so paper-thin that you have to wonder what could have induced the likes of Ricci, Guzman, and Leo to sign on, other than the prospect of a working vacation to Bayonne. The violent set-pieces, although certainly gory enough, are largely forgettable, except to serve as conclusive proof that perhaps Kevin James is not quite cut out to serve as an action hero.
“Guns Up” is one of those films that is so baffling that even as you are watching it, you can hardly believe that it exists—it feels like an idea for a parody trailer that inexplicably made its way through the entire filmmaking process without anyone realizing just how ludicrous the whole thing really was. Too silly for action fans, way too brutal for fans of James’s sillier projects, and too tedious for anyone just looking to kill 90 minutes in a reasonably painless manner, this film is pretty much a total zero—the kind of thing that will evaporate from your mind the minute that it ends. Even that won’t be soon enough for most viewers.
