Trailer for Ben Wheatley's Free Fire released

Good reviews have been flying in since yesterday’s world premiere of Ben Weatley’s sixth film Free Fire at the Toronto International Film Festival. Now that the first blood-splattered trailer has arrived online, we see why.

Set in 70s Boston, Free Fire’s premise is simplicity itself: two gangs meet in a warehouse to do an arms deal, but things quickly escalate until they’re in an all-out gun battle. When The Skinny spoke to Wheatley earlier in the year, he explained that the film is his response to the huge scale spectacle of destruction that comes out of Hollywood.

“I'd seen a lot of big Hollywood stuff and a lot of buildings blowing up,” he told The Skinny. “Incredible action sequences that should have been blowing me away, and I was watching them thinking, I just don’t care. I don’t understand why I don’t care about any of this stuff. It’s technically incredible, but it’s really boring and I don’t know why.

"And I kinda figured that maybe there’s something about the human scale of it. And I thought, what did I used to like in action films? I wanted to get back to that, really. To stuff where it was people fighting each other in a very intimate, close space. I think when the body count gets too high, it just gets silly, doesn’t it?”

We see what he means. The film looks to be set almost entirely within the warehouse where the gun deal goes wrong when itchy trigger fingers get the better of the various motley crew of crims assembled – who’re played by the likes of Brie Larson, Cillian Murphy, Sam Riley, Sharlto Copley, Armie Hammer, Michael Smiley and Jack Reynor – and all hell breaks loose.

Free Fire closes the London Film Festival on 16 Oct and we’ll be giving our official verdict then over at theskinny.co.uk/film. Until then, take a look at the trailer above and let us know your thoughts.