Frank Grillo, in his fully grizzled form, plays Gunner, a former special forces soldier and mercenary. When his niece, Julia (Eden Brolin), a reporter, is kidnapped in Venezuela, he must assemble a team of old pals West (Beau Knapp) and Matty (George Carroll), and new friend David (Josh Hutcherson), for one last mission to save her. That sounds straightforward, right? Well, it isn’t. Not at all. The script written by director John Swab and Santiago Manes Moreno makes everything far more complicated and convoluted than necessary.
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This relatively simple setup devolves into a tangled mass of details and exposition. For instance, Julia isn’t just Gunner’s niece, she’s Gunner’s dead brother’s daughter, and also a crusading journalist, and it’s her mother, Gunner’s dead brother’s wife, Olivia (Melissa Leo), who comes to Gunner to arrange the rescue. Oh yeah, Olivia also a corrupt U.S. senator with ties to the corrupt Venezuelan oil industry, which is overseen by Roman (Andy Garcia), another former merc-turned-pseudo-dictator. Roman and Gunner have their own fraught history, and Roman’s right-hand man, Moreao (Mekhi Phifer), has long lingering beef with Gunner and his crew. And there’s so much more. Like David’s dad worked with Gunner, West, and Matty on a bunch of jobs, that’s how they all know each other.
It goes on like this forever. And we haven’t even mentioned how the cartels, military contractors, oil companies, U.S. government, Venezuelan government, a group of rebels, and everyone else is all in bed together in every possible way. It’s a muddy, muddled blob of information and the script endlessly yells statements at you until they become meaningless. There’s a ton of details, information, and backstory, but that’s all it is, there’s little in the way of character or personality. Long Gone Heroes says things to us about these characters, it tells us who they are instead of showing us who they are. At least Roman gets to demonstrate how evil he is as he, multiple times, threatens to shoot a baby in the head.
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Grillo seems tailor made for the role of an ex-merc who has given up on everything, including life. But while that’s how he’s initially presented, that element dissipates after his introduction. From then on, he’s just man on a mission who doesn’t think about anything else. West and Matty banter back and forth like old friends, but it’s mostly Tarantino knock-off dialogue—they’re introduced in a café loudly discussing going down on their girlfriends. Across the board, the cast does a decent job, but there’s just not much to work with.
This is a well put together film aesthetically and technically. Brandon Cox’s cinematography is pleasing to the eye and director John Swab can construct a frame. One scene, right as our main core puts boots on the ground for the first time, they make their way through a jungle path used by the cartels and marked with desiccated corpse warnings. It’s bleak, haunting imagery. Moments of tactical action aren’t super noteworthy, but they’re solid enough to carry most viewers through.
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Long Gone Heroes wants to be about how these hard, jaded men come to care for something greater than themselves, about their redemptive journey and how they atone in some minor way for the horrific things they’ve done. It also feels like it wants to have some greater political importance, especially with recent events between the U.S. and Venezuela, or comment on corruption, the nature of private military contractors, and many other things, but it never does and that never comes together in any significant way. For all the things crammed into one movie, none of it is particularly memorable or compelling. [Grade: C/C-]
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