Killer Elite

Based on a true story, Killer Elite sees a hired assassin called back into duty when his mentor is held hostage by a powerful sheik who wants revenge on the SAS men who killed his sons. Danny takes the job in order to get Hunter released – a job that involves getting the men to confess on camera before killing them in such a way that it looks like an accident and cannot be traced back. However the targets are a paranoid bunch and once a few questions are asked and one of the men dies, the secretive group behind the deaths put former soldier Spike onto the case, pitting the two trained killers against each other.

This film feels like a missed opportunity and more must have been hoped for it – not least by the relatively big name stars that were involved. This is a tale of murky secrets, covert actions overseas, trained killers and the influence of money and power – it should be much more interesting that it is here, but the decision appears to have been taken to make it as a straight generic thriller. This isn't really a problem in terms of some of the action because there are "good bits" in here, the problem comes from the fact that the material actually doesn't lend itself to this approach as much as you would have liked. So, for example, this sort of generic thriller really suits simple characters, simple plots and thumping action scenes but instead Killer Elite hands us with two groups, neither of whom are particularly "likeable", so the genre approach tells the viewer to root for the good guy – but the plot gives us no clue as to who this is. I have no issue with murky and unlikeable characters, the problem is that the delivery of the film doesn't do anything with it and tries to force it all into a mould that it doesn't fit.

Fortunately the more dramatic sequences are still pretty good (not great, but good) and they come up reasonably often to allow the film to temporarily be the film it wants to be. Not often enough though, and all of them are damaged by the fact that the rest of the film around them isn't working as well – and there is a lot of "other film", too much in fact and it runs a good twenty minutes longer than it can cope with. Much like with the recent film Blitz, Statham does his thing well – whether it suits the film or not. He delivers what you expect him to and again maybe he is part of the reason the film is pushed to be something it is not. Owen appears to be more in touch with what the material should be and also does well with the mano-a-mano stuff that the film asks of him, but it is hard to watch him delivering on a complexity that the finished film had no interest in. De Niro is a solid presence because of who he is, but he is really phoning this in. Akinnuoye-Agbaje only has a small role but, as a fan of Oz who knows how good he can be, it is always good to see him in things.

There is a good story in Killer Elite but unfortunately all but the bullet points is lost in a telling that is trying to make more of a standard thriller and doesn't seem able or willing to do anything with the murky aspects of plot or characters. The end result is a so-so thriller with a so-so plot and performances that mostly don't really work. I wonder at what point in the production they started making it something it wasn't, but regardless when it happened, it did seem to happen and it is a shame because the story deserved to be told better than it was here.

I'm not sure what it was about Killer Elite that disappointed me, but it just didn't seem to live up to its potential. It might have been that the movie relied on Jason Statham to act, instead of just do action. He plays a retired hit man who gets pulled out of retirement to save a friend's life. But it just doesn't work, he's unconvincing. The retirement isn't convincing and neither is his reluctance to return to work. He was much better in the Mechanic which dealt with similar issues.

Overall the movie doesn't hold together very well. There is too much that they are trying to accomplish, but not enough gets developed. For instance, the romance between Danny (Statham) and Anne (Yvonne Strahovski) just seems to be cut in to the movie in a few places. The Feathermen (the group about whom the book the movie draws from is written) appear in a few scenes, yet they're role is barely explored. They are spliced in just enough to give Spike (Clive Owen) a support system.

It's not a terrible movie, but it could have been much more. I think it would make a better mini-series, so that the different parts could be explored properly. If not, eliminate the things that aren't given justice.

Killer Elite starts with the Jason Statham super-assassin fare, some random Mexican or South American dude is getting whacked and Jason Statham as Danny here kills car-fulls of them. But, then it manages to enormously over-complicate things the way only a British movie can do. There is the secret society called the feather-men (because their touch is sooo soooft), some oil sheik who hires Danny by kidnapping his mentor and a whole slew of characters and sub-characters that inhabit the Killer Elite world that all manage to be a little inconsistent with the rules of the movie.

Jason Statham, DiNiro and Clive Owen star, one gets the feeling they aren't in the movie but are sort of doing their thing floating above it. Statham has to be the super-man, the assassin who can kill a whole army if he wants to, DiNiro has to have his intricate monologues and dialogs, and Clive Owen has to be a badass. It does claim to be inspired by a true story but it's hard to weed out the "it could happen" true part and the chaff that all the big actors drag into the movie. We have the hokey "it's easy to kill but the hard part is living with it" kind of assassin introspection and on the other hand it hints at blood for oil military campaigns and political web but they distinctly form two separate layers in the movie.

As an action movie, it's full of it's shares of shootouts, grisly deaths, car chases and burly men punch-ups. It does that weird thing where goons are shot in the leg or punched in the head rather than killed. I suppose if you don't really care how the plot stupidly unravels itself, it's a decent action movie. But, as a plot, it's over-complicated and borderline nonsensical.

I don't recall seeing a movie like this in a good, long time. It's a macho-action-thriller that didn't have an A-list budget, but probably didn't really need it, either. You used to see more of this back in the 70s and 80s; these days this kind of movie usually has a much bigger budget, with the requisite special effects and massive action sequences such a budget buys. Here, though, it's a little different.

Good action, intriguing setup (definitely no good-guy/bad-guy here; nobody is completely innocent by any stretch), and pretty good characters. And a story that's somewhat better than you usually find in this particular kind of film.

Don't know that Jason Statham's a great actor, exactly, but he's definitely a presence and he's got others to do the acting around him, and he performs in a several action scenes that come right up to the edge without getting silly. And I liked the basic plausibility in most of the scenes.

I'm a guy, and Killer Elite is a pretty decent "guy" movie. You could do worse.

Decent acting from the supporting cast, an interesting story that is thankfully absent any clichés, and a lack of any "gotcha" in the story certainly help this movie stand out. But really it's the pacing that made it for me. Things happen FAST. They happen logically, and reasonably (well, reasonably given the nature of the story) but they happen quickly. The movie does not have any periods of introspection for our main characters. It suggests that they are having those moments, but doesn't linger on them or play them up at all; they are just facts, like everything else that happens in the movie (fights, deaths, kidnappings, etc.).

The story is complicated, involving at least 5 separately motivated factions, but at no time was it confusing (so there was no need for an "aha!" moment).

The fight scenes were all exceedingly well choreographed and fit the story so well that there was never a time when 2 people were facing off just so we could see them fight; I really appreciated that.

All in all, a very satisfying film: lots of action, lots of very good acting, and lots of attention to detail (it really looked like it was the early 1980s).

I was going to give this a 7/10, but as I was writing and thinking about it, I upped it to 8/10.