King of Killers

Producer, writer, director and co-star Kevin Grevioux makes his directorial debut with this film, and he did a better job with that, than using his writing experience to come up with a better screenplay. There's some decent action sequences, but sadly, most are overshadowed by Grevioux's horrible cinematography choices. I don't mind bold colors and high contrast to make a film feel animated in a comic book sort of way, but when you dial down the brightness, all a viewer sees are paint color splashes amongst shadowy backgrounds. Even the daylight scenes were too dark. This is amateur-hour filmmaking and makes for a frustrating viewer experience. Then you have his screenplay which is a knock-off of every assassin movie ever made, that was predictable, convoluted, cliched and generic. The normally comfortable 92 min runtime felt never ending with unnecessary sub-plots and ridiculous side-characters. Aside from the decent twist and best action parts towards the ending, the rest of the main narrative was repetitive, exhausting, unimaginative and dull. It's a generous 4/10 all going to Grillo's excellent and best performance of all the characters, albeit he deserves to be in much better films instead of these bottom bin B-films.

The movie is 1 and a half hour, and it only starts to get going around the hour mark.. with too much preamble that isn't worth the wait.

But if you enjoy scarce "stock" cinematic shots of cities, with vibrant sun-showered colors and clarity that don't match the rest of the movie.. you might take something out of it. Otherwise, prepare yourselves for incredibly awful and long-winded villain dialogue, obscured dull action, bad CGI squibs, generic sound mixing and crappy editing (particularly the 90s TV transitions), a charmless band of boring assassins and an unsatisfying dumb ending.

The premise of an Assassin's tournament could have been fun if done well.. but by defining a main character with a tragic backstory that pushes him forward makes for bad storytelling in such context. Not to mention their plans for a sequel that is probably not happening! Not to say that the story going forward wouldn't be enticing at all.

Too cheap in all departments, can't recommend anyone waste their time.

If you seen the movie Accident Man with Scott Adkins, well you gonna watch this and just be baffle how similar the 2 movies are with a bit of The Raid thrown into it. I kept telling myself "this would just be so much better if it was Michael Jai White, Amy Johnston, Ray Park and obviously Scott himself.

Alain Moussi is a very competent martial arts actor, and i enjoyed him in Kickboxer reboots, especially the second, and he is coming from a stuntman background, so it hurt for me to be negative toward this movie as obviously the budget must had been pretty low and im sure they did it with passion.

But i got to call it as it is and i think i am very generous to give it a 6 out of 10 on IMDB and a 3 stars on Letterboxd if only because ultimately i didn't dislike the movie, it was "ok", so ill still give it the yellow heart.

The issue is beside Alain Moussi, most actors in this are not from an on screen martial arts background. Frank Grillo is a good B movie actor, i like him, but don't expect him to pull out amazing fights. They got George St. Pierre, former UFC/MMA champion, and they use him in a ...gun fight? Not fist fight? Why?

Ultimately where the movie really loose points for me is how much the fights are filmed in a way to hide the fact that most of these peoples are really not used to film martial arts. Scenes are dark, flashy lights and fast jump cuts, at times i felt like i was watching a Steven Seagal movie.

There is a few competent fight scenes, but for a movie that is paper thin when it comes to plot and rely simply on this "Raid style" floor of boss fights, you would expect better action.

As i said above, i didn't hate it, i didn't looked at my phone or anything, but i just kept telling myself that for the peoples involved in this, it should had been much better, and ultimately some roles should had been casted differently.

I am someone very easy to please when it comes to action movies, especially Martial Arts movie, so for me it pass on the verge, but i would only "half recommand it" to the die hard fans of the genre. Peoples who seen everything like me and just want something new. But for others who watch a movie once a week or less, there is much better stuff to watch.

The 2023 movie "King of Killer", from writer and director Kevin Grevioux, was one I hadn't heard about. But as I happened to stumble upon it by random luck here in 2024, of course I opted to watch it.

First of all, the movie's cover had a particular late 1980s and early 1990s feel to it, which drew me in. And seeing that Frank Grillo was on the cast list, certainly helped to make me watch the movie as well.

The storyline in "King of Killers" was adequate. It was a bit on the simplistic side. But it made for an adequate enough viewing experience. However, I must say that it is hardly a movie that warrants more than just a single viewing. There wasn't really anything new brought to the screen here, as it has all been seen and done before in other movies, and often more successfully.

The acting performances in the movie were good. I was only familiar with Frank Grillo, Stephen Dorff and Kevin Grevioux on the cast list.

There was a good amount of action throughout the course of the movie, and that is certainly what carried the most of the movie, given the somewhat weak storyline.

Ultimately a watchable movie, but hardly an outstanding or memorable movie.

My rating of "King of Killers" lands on a five out of ten stars.

This movie proves that making a movie "just like John Wick" is as easy as riding a bicycle.

Except the bicycle has no wheels. The pedals are bent. The bike is on fire. You're on fire. The world is on fire.

This movie should be shown in every film school on Hollywood as a good example why one should NEVER cast themselves in a key role in a film they both wrote and directed. You are going to end up saying some of the dumbest lines ever written in all seriousness while the audience kills themselves laughing.

We watched this with our son and his fellow friends with LA Sheriffs Department and it ended up, not surprising, as a drinking game. One sip every time they did something laughably stupid in the movie and I think they were all looped by about the first hour. We were hoping it would get better near the end. No, it got worse.

My favorite scene was when they assassins were all hit in the chest with a laser dot, and - like every stupid, low budget action movie ever made - they all looked down.

In real life it would have been easy to track the progress of every killer by all the live ammunition they left lying on the ground. A shotgun was pumped FIVE times before it was shot once ... TWICE in the film. The magic Mossberg with the four-round magazine that was fired a total of 32 rounds without reloading. The visual effect muzzle flashes that were so low rent, they didn't even bother lining them up with the actual muzzle or differentiate the shape with the direction the gun was pointed. The plastic guns from the local dollar store where they didn't even try to hide the BB gun barrel.

I don't know where this movie was made but it was pretty obvious to all of us that they couldn't afford a technical advisor and they hired an armorer who's only qualification must be that he watched the Simpsons episode where Homer joins the NRA.

Read all the reviews here that report actors taking themselves WAY too serious, a really bad script, awful direction and cartoon-like actions. Take heart. You were warned.

Mind you, we watched it until the end. Thankfully, we had enough places for our son and his friends to sleep because none of them could drive home after the "King" of drinking games in watching for stupidity in scenes.