Gunless

Here in Canada we feel we put up with an awful lot of American bullshit. Watch a Canadian newscast and you’ll find intelligent, reasoned discourse on the wisdom of the latest policy decision and its potential impact on our larger socio-economic structure. You’ll find coverage of local municipal issues, stories presented with a minimum of hyperbole. Now go and watch Fox News. You’d swear Hitler and Mussolini walked down the middle of Washington, DC in an attempt to steal everyone’s gun, abort their women’s babies, force white hetero sexual couples into marrying unemployed black homosexuals so that illegal Hispanic immigrants can set up radical muslim mosques in Christian neighbourhoods and train terrorists to take American jobs.

We combat such ridiculousness with irony, satire, and razor sharp wit. We can do everything our Yankee counterparts do, just with one tenth of the money, manpower and audience. We send in our most talented actors and comedians to take over Hollywood, entice big productions north with our skilled and superior production teams, tax breaks and abundance of Tim Horton’s, but tell someone you saw a great Canadian film and you’re likely to be met with, “Aw, that’s just super”.

Paul Gross is on a mission to change all that. Probably the most talented Canadian actor who’s never really broken out to US audiences, he is the gift that keeps on giving to the modest masses north of the border. Gunless is a wonderfully incisive satire about American gun culture and the wild west mentality that still pervades an unfortunately large percentage of our neighbour’s way of life. Here he plays the Montana Kid, a gunfighter on the run who accidently crosses into the polite confines of small town western Canada. He lives by a code, a very rigid, inflexible code that is an unhealthy blend of ego, testosterone and male pride.

Right off the hop, he takes offense to the local blacksmith daring to touch and tend to his horse, and demands a showdown. The rest of the movie is about the wild and elaborate lengths he will go to for retribution. There is an awful lot to enjoy about this movie. It has a cheeky subversiveness about it, where every tense dramatic moment gets undercut by hilarity, it plays to the stereotype of our overly hospitable nature - how we’re so eager to please even those looking to kill us. There is a classroom scene which I felt brilliantly lays waste to the current second amendment debate raging south of the border and is a shining example of the wit inherent throughout the script.

Of particular delight was the performance of Tyler Mane. I have become quite a fan of his work over the years – at about 6’7” and about 275lbs, he is a menacing presence on screen. As Sabretooth in the first X-Men film, Ajax in Troy, and Michael Myers in the most recent Halloween movies, he has shown an ability to dominate the screen with his physicality and surly demeanour. In Gunless, they actually let him talk. He is quite funny and delivers his lines well – he’s capable of so much more than Hollywood has been willing to give him and I hope this role kickstarts a long and interesting career in film.

Watch and enjoy Gunless. Stick around for the credits – this PG movie gets decidedly R-rated during the outtakes. I give it 8 out of 10