After a few years as a supporting actor, Sean Penn comes back in a starring role for the The Gunman in which he also takes credits as both a co-screenwriter and producer. In the movie, based on the novel The Prone Gunman by Jean-Patrick Manchette, Penn plays Jim Terrier a reformed hitman seeking redemption that becomes a victim of the world he lives in.

Penn describes it as, "It's a movie about a very conflicted man, killing very bad men largely in service of himself which is very different to the Liam Neeson movies... which is a very good man fighting strictly for his children, so I really don't see the comparison."

Jim wants nothing more than to quit his job and stay home with his love Annie (Jasmine Trinca), an idealistic doctor who doesn't know what Jim does for a living.

While living in the Democratic Republic of Congo Jim was hired with a double agenda, working with a security task force to protect mining operations during the day and as a mercenary hitman for questionable interests at night. Jim's associate, Felix (Javier Bardem), who is secretly in love with Annie, assigns Terrier to assassinate the DCR's minister of mining (Clive Curtis). The rules established that whoever is assigned to the task has to leave the country immediately after completing it, so Jim had no choice but to flee and leave Annie behind.

Several years later Jim is back trying to rebuild the damage caused in the country and help the locals mine for themselves but some hired assassins come after him and some good fighting scenes ensue. Penn studied Krav Maga and shared with us that, "I was interested in the Krav Maga style of fighting because I had seen it applied and knew that it was philosophically different. There was no root in sport... it was more martial than art. The tactical advantages of it are what's being gone to in the world of those operators. Again, it was an accuracy issue." He also added how he managed to get away injury-free from the fighting scenes saying, "There were little ones – nothing serious happened. I mean, there was an extraordinarily achy body by the end of the film, but that's cumulative."

Jim then realizes that the attack must have something to do with what happened in his past and while also suffering from PTSD the quest to find who's behind it begins.

He starts in London, where he first checks in with his ex-associate Cox (Mark Rylance) but he doesn't gather any clues, so he heads to Barcelona where Felix is promoting some dubious new businesses to help Africa. To Jim's surprise Felix is now married and in the process of adopting a child with his former love Annie.

Jim gives Felix a heads up that he has records about their actions and is ready to expose them but then Cox turns the tables on Jim and he can no longer trust him and walks away. They go to Gibraltar where the real villain gets revealed and then back to Barcelona to confront the villain and save his long-time love at a bullfighting ring (even though Catalonia banned the sport in 2012) to which director Pierre Morel voiced, "We have to apologize to the Catalan people for that. We took the liberty to re-introduce bullfighting. I'm very sorry about that. It was just convenient to have him [Jim Terrier] go back to Madrid just to attend a bullfight. So we shot some of the bullfights in Madrid and some of the bullfights in Catalonia. It's a little freedom we took. It wasn't difficult [to film in Madrid]. We just shot in the existing event for three weeks – almost like a documentary."

The film, political, provoking and puzzling plot takes you from emotion to emotion across the world through beautiful locations in this action packed movie with riveting characters touching on some utterly frightening topics that will have you on the edge of the seat for the entire two hours.

The Gunman in theaters March 20, 2015.