Die In A Gunfight: Film Review

Cast: Alexandra Daddario, Diego Boneta, Justin Chatwin, Travis Fimmel, Emmanuelle Chriqui

Director: Colin Schiffli

It's clear what Die In a Gunfight wants to do.

With its stylish edges, quick cuts and slow mos, gunplay and young lovers on the run, it wants to be Romeo and Juliet for the TikTok generation.

Yet, it never quite gets there.

It's the story of Boneta's Ben, who's been in love with Daddario's Mary since way back when, but their love can't survive the feuding of two families. After years apart, the duo reunites and sends the respective families and their potential hitmen into a spin, with all sides determining that Mary and Ben should never end up together.

Die In a Gunfight opens promisingly, with an animated opening fight narrated from a viewer inside a cinema. With its freeze frame big graphics and voiceover, the tent's set out early on as Schiffli and clearly budget constraints make it clear that this is all they have for conveying backstory.

Within the first 10 minutes, most of the film's been overtaken with flashbacks and narration, as the movie works overtime to establish the characters' past, intertwined families and feuds. Coupled with the comic book style pontificating and posturing of the characters involved, Die In A Gunfight soon becomes a case of relatively vapid style over substance, and the movie begins to creak even though it has a relatively short runtime.

With its weak relationships, disparate narrative, and too much reliance on voiceover, Die In A Gunfight soon ends up feeling like a sub par Romeo and Juliet ripoff with hitmen and incoherence riddled all the way through.

Not even the usually eminently watchable Daddario can elevate this fare - Die In A Gunfight flounders in a bizarre mix of underwritten script and overwritten visual necessities.