“Is Dad John Wick?” Asks Henry (Leo Easton Kelly) his older sister Siobhán (Keana Marie) when the siblings watch their father Ray (Kevin James) in the kitchen of a closed restaurant how he hits a horde of attackers with fire weapon and frying pan painfully in their barriers. Mother Alice (Christina Ricci) is far less astonished that her husband is not the sophisticated Biedermann, who pounds regularly with the family at home and tries to dismiss his children. After all, his violent double life is a joint decision between the spouses.
In his most famous movie “The Department House Cop”, Kevin James played a near-police officer in “Guns Up“He now mimics an ex-cop: But the average salary of a law enforcement in New Jersey is obviously too low to be able to keep a family with two children financially. In a flashback, in a flashback at the beginning of the film, Ray changes the fronts and is made by the striped police officer to the debt drivers of a mafi-structured gangster gang, that of Michael (Melissa Leo) and her assistance (Luis) Guzmán) How a company with a social lust claim is made: for your killers and henchmen, the godmother even pays health insurance with additional benefits.
At least the kids are surprised when her philistine father Ray (Kevin James) suddenly makes one on John Wick!
Five years and many semi -criminal orders later, Ray arrived where he originally wanted to do: With sufficiently saving money in the hindquarters, the way back to bourgeois self -employment seems to be paved. In order to be able to fulfill the dream of his own family -run diner, he wants to break away from Michael's gait. But this is suddenly violently taken over by Lonny (Timothy V. Murphy), a weather -taught Mobster who has no understanding that the feared money collector wants to get out. In the event of an escalating shot of shooting, Ray is involved in the death of Lonny's nephew (Rob Gough) and is suddenly with his family on the shooting list of his former bunners.
Admittedly, the cumbersome action scenario could hardly be more generally and known. Neither creating an appropriate genre atmosphere nor a reasonably conclusive figure drawing seem to be among the craftsmanship of the filmmaker Edward Drake. The director has so far been more notorious than noted by making seven low -budgeted films with Bruce Willis (including “Apex” and “Cosmic Sin”) between 2021 and 2023 before his long -term illness became known to aphasia and frontotemporal dementia. Fortunately, after this tedious start, “Guns Up” quickly reflects on the comedic strengths of his main actor and changes the tone as quickly as it is convincing.
No risk role like in “Becky”
Most of Kevin James' films have been to look at since the end of his wonderful working-class sitcom “The King of Queens”, on the one hand not too much to solve themselves from the usual role of the relaxed, witty everyone, but on the other hand to give the actor the opportunity to accentuate this figure a little differently, be it through a more pronounced hung to physical action comedy (“that Heavyweight “) or a more melancholy comedy vibe (” Home Team “).
Unlike the most recently with the rough splatter thriller “Becky”, in which James the badly broken image change to the neo-Nazi prisoner could hardly succeed, “Guns Up” quickly makes it clear that despite a more explicit slope, he does not want to do a grim re-forming of the actor despite a more explicit slope (which always justifies a FSK-16 release). The film does not work as bad as a routine, as routine as well -deprived as self -deprived comedy in the second half.
The latest in the final, Christina Ricci steals the show for her film husband Kevin James!
This is primarily thanks to the effortless acting chemistry with a blankly rushing Christina Ricci (“The Addams Family”) in the last half hour that one wonders why the actress has not been one of the main sites of the Hollywood comedy cinema for a long time. At least in the end she steals the show from the more tried and tested Kevin James in this area: “I think that is more married to John Wick”, the film children of the two have to summarize when she finally reaches for the weapon. Despite all the obvious weaknesses, “Guns Up” is always an extremely entertaining pleasure.
Conclusion: “Guns Up” initially stumbles through generic thriller standards, but at the latest in the second half finds too surprisingly a lot of charm as a self-ironic action comedy with Kevin James and a wonderfully playing Christina Ricci. Certainly not a big hit, but always entertaining.