MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Gunmen’ an Ultraviolent Buddy Film

“Gunmen” (selected theaters) is the kind of picture people are talking about when they express concern over excessive screen violence. Murky in plot, sketchy in characterization, routinely crafted--except for Hiro Narita’s fine noirish camerawork--it exists only as an excuse to depict the piling up of bullet-riddled corpses. Considering its relentless mediocrity, it is amazing that it was actually previewed for critics rather than opening cold.

All you really need to know about its needlessly convoluted story is that it struggles in vain to play as a buddy movie, teaming up a straight-arrow bounty hunter (Mario Van Peebles), under contract to the Drug Enforcement Agency, and a goofy, small-time smuggler (Christopher Lambert) who inadvertently may hold the key to the location of a huge drug fortune. The film’s locale is the fictional South American country of Boa Vista--it seems lots like Colombia--and was filmed in Puerto Vallarta.

Van Peebles manages to work up a modicum of credibility, but Lambert’s part is so underwritten that his attempt to play it like Jean-Paul Belmondo in a comic action caper of the ‘60s makes the guy come across as merely being stupid rather than amusing.

Anyway, there is a slew of bad guys who throughout the movie are constantly trying to gun down or otherwise eliminate Van Peebles and Lambert--and lots of other people as well. Patrick Stewart is a drug kingpin so nasty that he buries his bride alive, Denis Leary is a gleeful killer, and Sally Kirkland is vivid but wasted in a small part as an arms dealer. The real culprits of “Gunmen,” however, are director Deran Sarafian and writer Stephen Sommers.

‘Gunmen’

Mario Van Peebles: Cole Christopher Lambert: Dani Servigo Denis Leary: Armor O’Malley Patrick Stewart: Loomis Sally Kirkland: Bennett

A Dimension release. Director Deran Sarafian. Producers Laurence Mark, John Davis and John Flock. Executive producers Lance Hool, Conrad Hool. Screenplay by Stephen Sommers. Cinematographer Hiro Narita. Editor Bonnie Koehler. Costumes Betsy Heimann. Music John Debney. Production designer Michael Seymour. Art director Hector Romero Jr. Set decorators Ian Whitaker, Enrique Estevez. Sound Fernando Camara. Running time: 1 hour, 31 minutes.

MPAA rating: R, for “strong action film violence and language.” Times guidelines: There are countless shootings and episodes of physical brutality.