Guns Up

Just a few short months ago, Christina Ricci received her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; an honor that, in comparison to how many working actors there are out there, few achieve. It was interesting to see who her guests were, especially since one of them was Dan Bucatinsky, her co-star and writer of the film All Over the Guy. Christina was showing the world that she is an indie girl, through and through, and it is in these kinds of smaller dramatic roles that she is most comfortable. She has done well in bigger-budget films, but that is not her strong suit.

Knowing that, I was interested to see how she would fare in a guns-blazing gangster action/drama/comedy from director/writer Edward Drake, a filmmaker whose filmography doesn’t include a single other movie I had even heard of. I went in to Guns Up with an open mind but not an ignorant one; after all, I was well aware that this film was opening almost exclusively straight to streaming. The end result is that I experienced a film that was low in scale, generic in nearly every way, yet nowhere near as bad as some of the schlock I’ve seen in Christina’s catalog from the last few years. This is nowhere near as bad as Distorted, nor as boring as Monstrous. 

The plot of this one involves Ray Hayes (Kevin James), a former police officer who found that his salary couldn’t provide a good life for his two kids, Henry (Leo Easton Kelly), Siobhán (Keana Marie), and his wife, Alice (Christina Ricci). So he takes a job as an enforcer for gang leader Michael Temple (Melissa Leo), putting the screws to people who owe Michael money and are late with the payments. This works out fine for Ray for a while, but now he has saved up enough money to retire from the mob and open up a diner with his wife and settle down. 

Unfortunately, timing is not on his side, Michael is killed by a rival gang leader, and the new leader refuses to let him retire. On top of that, Ray’s wife, Alice, has a secret of her own that ties back to the mob, too; a secret even bigger than the one Ray has been keeping from everyone. With Ray refusing to continue in the employ of the new boss, a shootout erupts, and he finds himself fighting alongside Alice while trying to keep his kids safe and extradite everyone from the mess he has gotten them all into. 

Kevin James is a bit of an acquired taste. He has a lovable doofus quality to him that works well in films like Paul Blart: Mall Cop and his many collaborations with Adam Sandler. In this film, he plays perfectly fine when interacting with his mildly dysfunctional family. Where he falters is when he is trying to play up being this tough mob enforcer. It never feels genuine, and at no point was it a convincing performance. This is not in his wheelhouse, and it’s painfully obvious. He has the physicality for the role but doesn’t carry himself well for it. 

Christina Ricci is equally unconvincing when tasked with kicking into action mode. She plays the mother very well, falling back on her own experiences with being one, but late into the film, there is a revelation that changes her character as drastically as Geena Davis in The Long Kiss Goodnight. But whereas Geena made us believe that change, Christina feels like she is just play-acting the role. This feels like a failure in the director more than the actress herself, but no matter who is to blame, it flat out doesn’t work. For her part, Ricci looks like she is having fun playing up the action; it’s just poorly done in nearly every way. This isn’t helped by all the violence being cut in such a way that we see very little of it. This is a product of the film’s low budget but a good director can compensate for that. Edward Drake is not that. 

These kinds of weaknesses could be somewhat excused if they were a part of a compelling plot. That’s not the case here. Instead, what we have is a by-the-numbers plot that amounts to nothing. We have seen this plot many times before, done better. There is too little meat to this plot to make us really care. Aside from a brief scene where Ray is being recruited, we get nothing about his background. We hear about his financial difficulties but only in passing, and we see nothing to cement those problems, not even a scene of him sifting through overdue bills. The family isn’t established very well, either. There is a brief scene where he is trying to have a family dinner with everyone, fighting over cell phones and locked bedroom doors. Aside from that, we get one brief scene where he is called to their school because his daughter was fighting. That’s it. This film gives us no reason to care for this family, which is a serious liability going into the climax. 

Because this film is so short, there is no time to develop anything. The family isn’t the only dynamic missing here. We get no real sense of the mob Ray is working for, either. It feels like a dime-store mob with how few members we meet. I’m not expecting a The Godfather level of named characters - this film doesn’t have the budget to even approach that - but I should have some feel for the size of this organization or the one taking it over. Instead, we get about a dozen people total, spread out over the two groups. Of these, the only one that stands out is Ignatius (Luis Guzmán), who is the only one who seems to know what kind of movie he is in. He gets the best moment in the film, too, as the final gunfight is breaking out, where he upgrades a machine gun to a bazooka, to his delight. 

The climax begins and ends so quickly that it feels incomplete. This is primarily because there are so few bad guys to take out, and Guzmán gets about half of them with a single shot. This is supposed to be Kevin James’ film, but that focus shifts to Christina Ricci in the finale, and she is given the final fight. This fight is shot in such a way that it is frustrating to watch and ends as quickly as it began. We instinctually want a satisfying final kill, but this film fails to deliver that. It’s cut in such a way, too, that we don’t see it clearly, either, further neutering the kill. 

This should have been a fun action comedy with ridiculous, over-the-top action and cartoonish villains. It’s none of those things. Instead, what we get is a bland action film that’s short on action and gives us generic characters on both sides of the conflict. It doesn’t take much to make a cheesy action film. Unfortunately, Edward Drake doesn’t appear to have any real sense of style or substance as he has created a film lacking in both elements. It’s not great. It’s not even good. Ultimately, it’s just kind of bland and generic. I look forward to a time when Christina Ricci returns to her roots and makes a truly compelling Indie drama; something that plays up to her strengths as a character actress. This film is not that. 

Release Date: July 18, 2025

Running Time: 92 Minutes

Rated R

Starring: Kevin James, Christina Ricci, Maximilian Osinski, Luis Guzmán, and Melissa Leo

Directed By: Edward Drake