The Gunman
Director: Pierre Morel
Starring: Sean Penn, Javier Bardem, Ray Winstone, Idris Elba
Three stars
Hurrah for old-school 1980s action heroes. You know the kind – the mavericks who play by their own rules, smoke copiously and prefer to engage in combat bare-chested. That’s what Sean Penn channels in this satisfying throwback thriller, in which the body count is only topped by the number of times he sparks up a cigarette.
We begin in 2006 in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Penn plays Jim Terrier, a morally adrift gun-for-hire called on to execute a minister. Fast forward eight years and Terrier is back in DRC, digging wells to atone for his sins, when three killers show up hungry for revenge. Terrier realises the past is gone but not forgotten.
He flees to London, starts a bar fight, visits a neurologist and teams up with bit-part sidekick Stanley (a typecast Ray Winstone). Fresh leads take Terrier to Barcelona, Gibraltar and back again, where he encounters the suspiciously bumbling Felix (played delightfully by Javier Bardem), who ordered the assassination eight years ago.
When he’s not breaking skulls, Penn spends a lot of screen time flexing his muscles, chewing the scenery and, as mentioned, smoking. Oh, and throwing up, because as if it wasn’t unbelievable enough that a 54-year-old could floor teams of younger, trained killers unassisted, let’s have him suffering from an ill-defined “cumulative brain trauma”, too, which leaves Terrier prone to passing out at inopportune moments and forgetting things – important things.
A lot of lazy comparisons have been made between Penn's late-career, action-hero about-turn and Liam Neeson's macho resuscitation in 2008's Taken. It's inevitable, really, as The Gunman is directed by the man behind the original Taken, Pierre Morel. Penn's role as co-writer and co-producer suggest premeditation from an actor capable of so much more (try to imagine a better lead actor in Milk, Tree of Life or Sweet and Lowdown).
But Penn is a much scarier kind of killer. Terrier is a stringless wild card, an unbalanced loner who steals strangers’ clothes and pathologically stalks a lover he walked out on.
Penn’s unbalanced intensity is renowned and here it finds a welcome home, recalling a time when action heroes were mysterious, cloudy men who didn’t need smartphones and were fighting their conscience as much as their enemies.
The Gunman's many flaws aren't worth listing. Yet its tightly wound series of hair-raising action scenes in exotic locations offer undistilled, teeth-grinding pleasure – the closing piece in the midst of a bull fight is worth the ticket price alone.
Things close with a ham-fisted political polemic about the scourge of western business interests in the developing world. Job done, Penn.
• The Gunman is out in cinemas on Thursday, March 19
rgarratt@thenational.ae
Visa changes give families fresh hope
Foreign workers can sponsor family members based solely on their income
Male residents employed in the UAE can sponsor immediate family members, such as wife and children, subject to conditions that include a minimum salary of Dh 4,000 or Dh 3,000 plus accommodation.
Attested original marriage certificate, birth certificate of the child, ejari or rental contract, labour contract, salary certificate must be submitted to the government authorised typing centre to complete the sponsorship process
In Abu Dhabi, a woman can sponsor her husband and children if she holds a residence permit stating she is an engineer, teacher, doctor, nurse or any profession related to the medical sector and her monthly salary is at least Dh 10,000 or Dh 8,000 plus accommodation.
In Dubai, if a woman is not employed in the above categories she can get approval to sponsor her family if her monthly salary is more than Dh 10,000 and with a special permission from the Department of Naturalization and Residency Dubai.
To sponsor parents, a worker should earn Dh20,000 or Dh19,000 a month, plus a two-bedroom accommodation
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Kill
Director: Nikhil Nagesh Bhat
Starring: Lakshya, Tanya Maniktala, Ashish Vidyarthi, Harsh Chhaya, Raghav Juyal
Rating: 4.5/5
EMIRATES'S REVISED A350 DEPLOYMENT SCHEDULE
Edinburgh: November 4 (unchanged)
Bahrain: November 15 (from September 15); second daily service from January 1
Kuwait: November 15 (from September 16)
Mumbai: January 1 (from October 27)
Ahmedabad: January 1 (from October 27)
Colombo: January 2 (from January 1)
Muscat: March 1 (from December 1)
Lyon: March 1 (from December 1)
Bologna: March 1 (from December 1)
Source: Emirates
