Robert De Niro. Clive Owen. Jason Statham. Three fantastic, well-known action movie stars from two-and-a-half generations of moviemaking. A trailer that promises action and more action, followed by some more action.
Why the hell is this movie so boring?
Onto the review!
The movie starts out with a little 'gotcha' text explaining that the world has devolved into war and corruption as we fight over resources and oil. Assassins are used worldwide to eliminate targets and clandestine groups abound. The year? 1980! Wakka wakka! No, I didn't ruin anything by telling you this. It's a total groaner that does nothing to establish the story, only the setting.
Our first scene is of Danny (Statham) and Hunter (De Niro) performing a hit on some Mexican Politician....or drug lord...or something. The hit goes bad when Danny sees *gasp!* a kid in the back seat. I mean, it doesn't go wrong like "I couldn't kill the guy in front of the kid," more like "a kid saw me kill that guy. Forget this, I'm out."
Skip to one year later! Danny boy (you'll hear that a lot, and it's annoying) is now retired in Australia. See? Even movies agree that Australia is made of nothing but poison, and if a hit man wants to retire, there's nowhere safer, because most assassins don't want to risk potentially getting killed by 500000000 different types of angry wildlife.
So Danny is retired, but Hunter got himself held hostage! In a plot twist everyone can see coming, it's all a lure to get Danny out of retirement because his agent (named Agent, played by Adewale Akinnouye-Agbaje (thanks IMDB!!!)) wants his best man on the job. Hunter will stay imprisoned by a rich Omani oil sheik until Danny kills three British Special Service troops who were responsible for killing three of the sheik's sons.
Somehow Clive Owen's character, Spike, gets word of all this, and since he just happens to be a super-paranoid ex-British SS man working for an underground group of rich men called Featherlight, he starts keeping tabs on Danny and his crew. At this point the movie goes batshit crazy and jumps scenes so often and so poorly that I spent the next half hour trying to figure out if I was watching the bad guys or the good guys.
I really have nothing else to say except Spike and Danny have a really good fight scene in a hospital, everyone you expect to die does, everyone you expect to live does, Danny has the exact change of heart you expect at exactly the moment you figure, the movie ends three different freaking times, and you stop giving a crap about an hour into the film, which is a total shame.
The idea is there, but there are so many plot twists and threads to put together that the film could have been 45 minutes shorter and been very entertaining, or two hours longer and properly fleshed out everything. Instead you get a muddled mess where you eventually stop caring who is doing what where, too many damn flashbacks and a terribly horned-in love story between Danny and *surprise!* a girl, Anne (Yvonne Strahovski) who grew up with him in the orphanage (farm? collective? child slave ring?).
The other shame is the writing. A few conversations and scenes are tight, fascinating or downright hilarious. My favorite dialog was between Danny's two compatriots, one of whom is played by a nigh-unrecognizable Dominic Purcell, tattooed and mutton-chopped. They are arguing over how to accomplish an assignment and the following exchange takes place:
"Would you like a lolly?"
"I would love one."
"Strawberry or fuck you?"
Subtle and funny! Unfortunately, the rest of the movie is anything but subtle, as they keep reminding the audience that these people are assassins! They also do nothing in the way of acting. As much as I like Statham, Owen and De Niro, they seem to just be reciting their lines and looking for a paycheck here. De Niro especially looks like he's given up as he alternately appears haggard, bored, and distant.
I really have nothing to recommend about Killer Elite. There are better fight scenes elsewhere, the plot is too muddled and predictable, and the acting is pretty standard. Everybody scowls and growls. Go pull out your copy of Equilibrium if you need to get your gunfight fix. This may still be better than last year's stinker, Righteous Kill, but I'm not sure since I didn't start going out of my way to watch crappy movies until this year.
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