TOMMY GUNS - Mark Reviews Movies

Tommy Guns, Kino Lorber

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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 12, 2023

It's difficult to describe what writer/director Carlos Conceição is doing with Tommy Guns without giving away a secret that isn't revealed until the third act. What can be said of this tale is that the final revelation clarifies much and puts everything into an intriguing new context, but the shift isn't quite enough to justify why the filmmaker hides his most promising idea for so long, only for the movie to further evade the ramifications of what it all means.

The story is set in Angola in 1974—a year before that African country achieved independence from Portugal, as some spare opening text explains. The initial scheme of the narrative is divided in two, as a local woman named Tchissola (Ulé Baldé), who works for a Portuguese nun (played by Leonor Silveira) at a church near her home, goes about her daily routine and a young Portuguese soldier (played by Silvio Vieira) goes about his.

Fighters for the country's independence are on the rise, which would seem to be of some concern to the solider. He's too busy, though, becoming so caught up in nihilistic philosophy that he doesn't even notice when one of his comrades is killed about a hundred feet from him.

Those two characters, the woman and the soldier, do have an encounter by the end of this prologue, which seems completely isolated from the story that follows until Conceição's final disclosure of information. However, the way in which that scene plays out is such a shock that it puts the entire dynamic between the colonizing force and the fight against it into an intimate, terrifying context.

As for the rest of the story, it's set at and near a military outpost, run by a hard-nosed colonel (played by Gustavo Sumpta) and filled with mostly anonymous young soldiers. The senseless violence that defines that early moment continues here, as the soldiers hunt an African man for an alleged betrayal.

For the most part, though, the story is one of underlying longing for home, family, and some kind of normalcy, represented by Zé (João Arrais). He's a soldier who desperately wants to see his mother and tries to find a way to get past a large, seemingly endless wall that separates the outpost from the rest of the world. The colonel says it's for his unit's own protection.

Conceição meanders a bit too much here, as the soldiers deal with the violence they have committed—or, more pointedly, don't do so—and are at a loss when the colonel arranges a a sex worker (played by Anabela Moreira) for them. Again, the whole of Tommy Guns eventually makes sense, as Conceição transforms this story from one about trying to control an entire country by force into one about a different form of control. Just when it's time for the filmmaker to explore that concept, though, the story is basically finished.

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