Father and Guns!

Father and Guns is a Canadian film about a father and son cop team that must go undercover to save one of their own. Sounds easy but for this team nothing comes easy excepts insults and abuse. Jacques and his son Marc are constantly at each others throats which makes this daring rescue even harder.

The Blood Machine Biker Gang has kidnapped Marc's best friend and fellow officer. They hatch a plan which involves getting the bikers' lawyer, Charles Berube, to turn states evidence. The police force learn through surveillance that the lawyer and his son Tim, who has suicidal thoughts are off on a father and son therapy retreat in the great outdoors.

Marc and his father are instructed to infiltrate the therapy retreat as father and son who need to work on their relationship. They don't have to do much acting. Jacques never thinks his son is good enough and Marc is insecure and fails to pull the trigger when the pressure is on. Literally and figuratively. He failed to shoot at the van the bikers' used to kidnap his best friend and his girlfriend just dumped him siting he "lacked meat".

This film has several of the concepts we learned in IDS 101. It is noticeable right from the start that masculinity will have a prominent role in this movie. Jacques and Marc are always trying to prove who is better at everything. Marc is the top rated marksmen but his father wants him behind a desk. He is only the best on paper. Marc is jealous that his father is a well liked and respected man and is always the topic of conversation. There is a scene during therapy where the counselor instructs Marc to tell his father his feelings. When Marc says that he hates that every conversation or topic is about his father... Jacques gives out a primal scream that could be heard for miles. The counselor immediately starts commenting on how wonderful it was and on and on until the point where Marc is like, "what about me?"

Sexism rears it's ugly head when the men are talking at dinner. The topic is basically where a woman's place should be. In the kitchen or the bedroom. Ageism also squeaks in when the sons instruct their fathers on the ways of the modern woman and her sexual freedom. They imply that old dogs can't learn new tricks.

A few of the therapies involve mud wrestling where masculinity and testosterone is is high form and regression back to infants where one of the father and son teams are shown suckling. I'm not sure what class theme or concepts that falls under but it got quite the reaction from the audience.

The relationship between Charles, the lawyer, and Tim, his son was that of anger and resentment. Tim feels unloved and unwanted and Charles feels Tim is too much of a sissy. Tim expresses his emotions by openly crying while Charles is cold and unemotional. It turns out in the end that Charles was similar to his son at a young age and was forced to man up. Again, men are seen as being masculine if they are emotionless, scared of nothing, and burly.

I don't want to give away the film but it was definitely worth watching and I can't wait to enjoy it again. Oh, it definitely doesn't meet the Bechdel Test for Women. There was only one women character with a name but she and Marc only talked about their relationship.

Go see it! Who knew Canadians could be funny?

Photos:
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