It’s time for a film about Machine Gun Kelly, or as he’s called near the end, Pop Gun Kelly! That was probably one of the best insults that I’ve heard in a long time. That was absolutely great, I was cracking up there. The cops got to have a good laugh and it was just such a clever line you know? This film does a good job of chronicling the events of what’s going on here and establishing Kelly as an all bark no bite kind of character. I don’t always think what the characters were doing would make any sense though.

Kelly ends up robbing a big bank and showing the world why he is to be feared. He has quite a bit posse of men around him and his girlfriend is particularly impressed with his antics. She likes to flirt with everybody to rile Kelly up and cause some chaos. Definitely one of those really crazy relationships and it only gets worse from the intro. The cops need to grab Kelly but it’s hard to find him. So for now they will wait and ponder their next move. They have all the time in the world while Kelly is bound to make a mistake sooner or later.

It’s honestly pretty easy to see how Kelly and the gang were caught in this movie with how much they were fighting. Someone was constantly getting beaten up and thrown around. Imagine losing your arm to a lion/tiger and not getting revenge right? Kelly definitely underestimated the guy there. I think the main problem with some of their actions is ultimately for moments like this though. Kelly is having a breakdown so his girlfriend starts pulling moves on his friend so he could go and beat Kelly up. The guy does so…and then doesn’t finish Kelly off? So naturally Kelly grabs his machine gun and gets the upper hand.

At several points in the film the characters get beat up and just go back to working for Kelly. Then some have absolutely no situational awareness. One of Kelly’s friends starts laughing and making fun of Kelly for being scared…while Kelly is right there. So obviously the guy is beaten up for a while. Another guy tries to steal some of the money…and so naturally he gets beat up, etc. None of the villains seemed to be any smart and hey sometimes they aren’t but this felt a little extreme at times.

Even the tough girlfriend who was calling the hots and messing with everybody. Laughing as much as she was while getting in Kelly’s face was not a good move. How about the cabal of fighters who threatened to murder Kelly but then they were just gambling in a room so he shot them all? A lot of the events in the film just come across as being rather bizarre so I can see why this is a fairly loose adaption. I imagine things definitely didn’t play out quite like this in a lot of ways. The important thing though was to get across just how scared Kelly was the whole time and I would definitely say they succeeded in that. The guy was extremely afraid of everything death related. Put him next to a skull or anything like that and it was curtains for the guy. He was definitely not coming back from that.

He was also shown to not even be a villain with an honor code. He was very quick to betray his girlfriend for some random ladies and had no real remorse about it. He’s rude to everyone and Kelly is always making a bunch of threats. As tough as his girlfriend was acting near the end, I do think there’s a few times she could have come close to being bumped off. She may claim that Kelly didn’t have the guts but in a fit of rage I definitely wouldn’t take that for granted. This is the kind of guy who could absolutely pull that off if he needed to.

Then you have the little girl who was being held hostage and the caretaker. The whole thing was definitely a rough spot for them. Both of them held themselves together fairly well I’d say. The caretaker went through a lot but I was glad at least in this case Kelly wasn’t about to let things go any further. I’ll take what I can get in terms of moral character. It may not be a whole lot but at least it’s something.

For a film called Machine Gun Kelly, he doesn’t actually use the weapon all that much though. I think it might have been good to see him using the gun a few more times against some random gangsters at least. You can’t do it at the end because it would not match the ending’s message so I get that, but doing it earlier would have been a really good idea. It would make the ending hit all the harder. Honestly Kelly’s rationale also makes a lot of sense. Why fight a battle that you know you can’t win and you would die for rather than surviving another day even if it’s in prison. It’s not quite so simple of course as continued survival can be rough in its own way but yeah dying for no reason is not really a tempting offer to anyone.

Overall, Machine Gun Kelly is an entertaining film. Sometimes perhaps not for the reasons that were originally intended but it will definitely keep your attention the whole way through. The final line alone is really worth the watch but it’s generally a good time either way. The only bad scenes I’d say involve the lion and Kelly really poking fun at him the whole time and teasing him by throwing rocks. I could definitely do without all of that so those were the weakest scenes. When it was the gangsters all fighting and trying to get on each other’s nerves things were way more exciting. The film never forgets to remind you how they’re all villains and I appreciate that. You’re rooting for the cops to take them down the whole time.