Entertainment
‘The Gunman’ – shoots off-target
Film: “The Gunman”; Director: Pierre Morel; Cast: Sean Penn, Jasmine Trinca, Javier Bardem, Ray Winstone, Idris Elba and Mark Rylance; Rating: **1/2
Drafted as a thriller with a love triangle thrown in, “The Gunman” is the tale of an ex-assassin in hiding, who is now being hunted.
In a brief prologue dated 2006, the film opens in Kinshasa in the Congo. A news bulletin reveals how large corporations were seeking control of the natural resources in poor and impoverished countries.
During that phase, in what was referred to as Project Calgary, Jim Terrier (Sean Penn) working for the corporate, assassinates the mining minister of Congo. Then, on the advice of his best friend and partner in crime Felix (Javier Bardem), he leaves behind his girl-friend Annie (Jasmine Trinca) and flees the country.
Eight years later, Jim works for an NGO in a coastal area amidst tight security, when all of a sudden men with arms land up where he works. On realising that they were specifically looking for him, he sets out on a mission to find out who is hunting him.
He travels from Africa to London to Barcelona catching up with old friends, trying to solve this mystery as to who wants him killed. And during the course of the narration it is revealed that Terrier suffers from memory loss, depression and head trauma.
Packed with cliches picked up from “Memento”, “Enemy of the State”, “The Counselor” and “The Expendables” along with impulsive digressions, dubious characters and gaping plot-holes, the script lacks the bite of a wholesome fresh thriller.
Directed by Pierre Morel who had earlier delivered “District 13”, “Taken” and “From Paris With Love”, this film is based on the novel “The Prone Gunman”, by French writer Jean-Patrick Manchette.
Even though the film has an impressive cast line-up offering a great mix of acting styles and accents, wonderful locations with some arresting moments and some highly stylised action sequences, the film fails to impress.
The entire setup seems contrived and a re-launchpad for the ageing Sean Penn.
With a well-chiselled physique, Penn’s Terrier flings his shirt at the drop of a hat, smokes like a chimney and kills in retaliation. He traverses a morally complicated past like a zombie and the script fails to explain how he got into the mess in the very first time or the motive of eliminating him after a lapse of so many years.
As for his performance, Penn, with his attitude on his sleeve, sleepwalks through his character, making it difficult to relate to him.
The screen comes alive with the quirky histrionics of Javier Bardem, Jasmine Trinca and Ray Winstone, who plays Terrier’s friend the helpful friend Stanley.
Mark Rylance as Terrier’s other estranged colleague Cox is functional as the other bad guy. And, Idris Elba as the Interpol Agent is wasted.
Overall, “The Gunman” shoots off-target!
International online casino Casino Days has published a report sharing their internal data on what types and brands of devices are used to play on the platform by users from the South Asian region.
Such aggregate data analyses allow the operator to optimise their website for the brands and models of devices people are actually using.
The insights gained through the research also help Casino Days tailor their services based on the better understanding of their clients and their needs.
Desktops and Tablets Lose the Battle vs Mobile
The primary data samples analysed by Casino Days reveal that mobile connections dominate the market in South Asia and are responsible for a whopping 96.6% of gaming sessions, while computers and tablets have negligible shares of 2.9% and 0.5% respectively.
The authors of the study point out that historically, playing online casino was exclusively done on computers, and attribute thе major shift to mobile that has unfolded over time to the wide spread of cheaper smartphones and mobile data plans in South Asia.
“Some of the reasons behind this massive difference in device type are affordability, technical advantages, as well as cheaper and more obtainable internet plans for mobiles than those for computers,” the researchers comment.
Xiaomi and Vivo Outperform Samsung, Apple Way Down in Rankings
Chinese brands Xiaomi and Vivo were used by 21.9% and 20.79% of Casino Days players from South Asia respectively, and together with the positioned in third place with a 18.1% share South Korean brand Samsung dominate the market among real money gamers in the region.
Cupertino, California-based Apple is way down in seventh with a user share of just 2.29%, overshadowed by Chinese brands Realme (11.43%), OPPO (11.23%), and OnePlus (4.07%).
Huawei is at the very bottom of the chart with a tiny share just below the single percent mark, trailing behind mobile devices by Motorola, Google, and Infinix.
The data on actual phone usage provided by Casino Days, even though limited to the gaming parts of the population of South Asia, paints a different picture from global statistics on smartphone shipments by vendors.
Apple and Samsung have been sharing the worldwide lead for over a decade, while current regional leader Xiaomi secured their third position globally just a couple of years ago.
Striking Android Dominance among South Asian Real Money Gaming Communities
The shifted market share patterns of the world’s top smartphone brands in South Asia observed by the Casino Days research paper reveal a striking dominance of Android devices at the expense of iOS-powered phones.
On the global level, Android enjoys a comfortable lead with a sizable 68.79% share which grows to nearly 79% when we look at the whole continent of Asia. The data on South Asian real money gaming communities suggests that Android’s dominance grows even higher and is north of the 90% mark.
Among the major factors behind these figures, the authors of the study point to the relative affordability of and greater availability of Android devices in the region, especially when manufactured locally in countries like India and Vietnam.
“And, with influencers and tech reviews putting emphasis on Android devices, the choice of mobile phone brand and OS becomes easy; Android has a much wider range of products and caters to the Asian online casino market in ways that Apple can’t due to technical limitations,” the researchers add.
The far better integration achieved by Google Pay compared to its counterpart Apple Pay has also played a crucial role in shaping the existing smartphone market trends.
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