Fast Charlie - An Action Thriller with a Bit of Dark Humor to Add the Element of Fun

After months of having its poster put in the Coming Soon section of the biggest Indonesian cinema chain, this movie was finally released mid of last week. Since the only other movies were horror type, I decided to watch this one by myself yesterday, as my wife would rather see her favorite K-dramas. All right, I'll get right to it then.

Brief Story Line

Charlie Swift (Pierce Brosnan - Black Adam, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again etc) had been working as a fixer for the mobs led by Stan (James Caan - The Godfather, Misery etc) for over twenty years and was very close to the rest of the people he considered as family. When he did his latest job fixing a problem for another mob leader in the organization called Beggar (Gbenga Akinnagbe - The Deuce TV series etc), Charlie had to seek the help from a woman named Marcie (Morena Baccarin - Deadpool, Greenland etc) to solve it.

Unexpectedly though, Charlie's family was attacked by their competitor. Now Charlie must save himself from their capture while trying to avenge the people responsible for the attack.

So how would the story conclude? You could find out in this movie.

End of Brief Story Line

I saw the trailer to this movie few weeks ago in the theater and thought it looked quite interesting. Plus I kind of like Pierce Brosnan and thought this role might suit him better than the one I just saw last year on Netflix (that terrible The Out-Laws). However, from the trailer I could already foresaw that it was not going to be a full action movie and turned out I was right. This movie was more like an action thriller but the dark humor to my surprise was quite strong. It was actually fun looking at Brosnan playing this character with his witty comments and especially his interaction with Morena Baccarin's character, Marcie. It was certainly the highlight of this film to my opinion.

After a bit of action in the early stage with some of the dark comedy that was strongly felt, the movie sprang to life at roughly half hour mark. Beyond that, it became pretty intense and also more exciting. There were few brutal moments here and there combined with the story of Charlie trying to fulfil his personal vendetta. And there were even one or two twists, though not the shocking kind and could have been guessed if you were concentrating enough watching it. It had a pretty nice ending and short duration of only 90 minutes including closing credits that did not have any mid or post end credit scenes.

The movie itself was actually adapted from an award winning 2001 novel titled Gun Monkeys written by Victor Gischler, based on screenplay by Richard Wenk (writer of The Equalizer movies, The Magnificent Seven etc). It was directed by Phillip Noyce who had some experience in making action thriller films like Clear and Present Danger, The Bone Collector, Salt and few others. I also read that it was highly regarded by critics which meant Wenk and Noyce did a good job that was well received. For me personally though, the good part was the lead cast Brosnan and Baccarin. Btw, this was apparently the final appearance of James Caan in a movie as he sadly passed away in 2022. Aside from the names I mentioned above, the rest were support cast who did not have enough screen time to leave lasting impression.

Overall this was an OK action thriller film with some dark humor to make it fun. It was not a full action type with explosive action or tons of fights but it was nice watching Brosnan fixing problems using his skill in a quite elegant way (reminded me of his time as James Bond). So if you want to see this kind of movie, then you could give it a try as it's currently available in certain cinemas. 

Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars