Killing Season

I was expecting to despise this movie. I only watched it because I was in the mood to see a bad De Niro movie, so the one where he's opposite Travolta playing a Serbian seemed to fit the criteria perfectly. But I was actually on board for the first 15 or so minutes of Killing Season. De Niro's character is off in a cabin isolated from his family and still recovering from the effects the Bosnian war had on him however many years ago, and Travolta's character is out for vengeance because he was left for dead in the same war on the opposing side. It's a simple enough premise. And there's one interesting scene where De Niro and Travolta are drinking and sharing war stories where you actually feel some tension but mutual respect building between them. Kind of like Pacino and De Niro in Heat (a blasphemous comparison but it's the first thing that came to mind). Anyway, I wanted more of that.

But as soon as that's over, the movie turns into a cat-and-mouse game between the two of them that consists of one of them getting captured and tortured, then they somehow escape and the chase continues until the other guy gets captured and tortured, then they somehow escape and the cycle continues. It's just dumb and predictable. And let's talk about the accents for a minute. Travolta doesn't even have a bad accent. Mind you I don't know how authentic of a Serbian accent it is, but the accent itself is convincing enough. The problem is that he uses the same intonation for everything he says. At one point he's literally shot in the f*cking face and the next minute he's talking in exactly the same tone as before. And De Niro does this southern accent that drifts in and out, and you can tell he's just there for a paycheck because he's not even trying to pull it off convincingly. Hell it was more believable in Machete. And the special effects, holy god they're awful. They'll randomly cut to a close up of a wound and it just looks terrible. It's gratuitous, and I don't mind gratuity all that much but when you can clearly tell something is CGI, there's no excuse for that to make it in the final cut. It's unnecessary, it looks like crap, get it out of there.

So yeah, I ended up disliking the movie but not for the reasons I was expecting. Travolta's accent wasn't the worst part of the movie like I thought it'd be. The story was quite interesting but it gets resolved in the most half-assed way, like there's absolutely no pathos when there so easily could have been seeing as how it's about two opposing war vets encountering each other after all this time. I mean, it's not a terrible movie. It really isn't. De Niro has had much worse, so has Travolta. But there are glimpses of potential all over this movie that get squandered in the dumbest possible ways, and that itself makes Killing Season a frustrating watch.

So many ridiculous scenes happened in this movie. For example, this one guy was down then the other guy got a chance to have a shot at him but then he didn't do it. Then next thing you know the first guy somehow got an opportunity to get a shot at the other guy. This type of scenario happened probably 3 or 4 times again and again just ridiculous. Just do it already! Like come on.

In addition, the accent is really funny like many reviewers on here mentioned. The actor tried too hard and he seems to fail at it.

Waste of 1hr 30mins seriously and I gave this movie a 5/10 rating since it has some suspense scenes to it.

I think the problem with this film is the actors are always placed on a extremely high pedestal and any slip up or under par performance and they are shot to bits. I definitely agree with people when they say this film wasn't a 10 star blockbuster but also disagree with the ratings of 3 or below. I believe De Niro and Travolta performed as well as they could with the script that was provided.

Nicolas Cage was to be Benjamin Ford originally but was replaced by De Niro, I think i would have expected Cage to lower the standard of this movie a lot if he actually was cast in the end.

One of the main criticisms of the film was Travoltas accent. I mean it could have been a lot worse but it still was noticeable. I think casting a actor with a genuine accent would have been the smartest bet. After all De Niro would have been all it took for me to watch this without Travolta in it at all.

I'm not familiar with the war at all so can't comment on any of the accuracy of it or any faults they have with it.

The main part of the movie with the cat and mouse chase through the woodland around Benjamin Fords home was very suspenseful not know what the outcome of there very own war of revenge. The couple of torture scenes may be hard to watch by some people as they are quite graphic. Apart from the accent issue i enjoyed the movie. The story was there and the actors defiantly were. Maybe the script could have done with slight tweaking but if you can overlook that then you will enjoy it. 5.5/10

First of all this review focuses on the cinematography and acting of this movie and not its historical accuracy, I am not a judge of that. All I'm going to say is that history has many sides.

Killing Season brings to the big screen the first collaboration of two great actors, Robert De Niro and John Travolta. Both of the actors bring mediocre performances and are basically the main reason that this movie is quite appealing. Travolta's Serbian accent, I thought, was decent enough and quite believable. De Niro's performance was a bit rushed, like he did this movie as a favour for someone, or simply for money.

Although overly cheesy and quite violent this film is perfect for thrill seekers who like to see good actors play roles that do not suit them at all. The plot is simple and does not complicate things although I do believe that the flashback scenes were useless to the portrayal of the story. The only thing need said about the plot is that it is a simple "revenge seeking" story.

To summarize, this movie is an adventurous story with beautiful scenery and intense action scenes that appeals for both action and thrill seeking audiences but also to more critically thinking audiences that focus on exaggerated acting performances. Overall I give this movie a well deserved 6/10.

For starters, the movie gets absolutely everything wrong about events of the Bosnian war, but since such ignorance is expected from Hollywood, there is no reason to hold it against this particular title.

The premise of the movie is good, the basic story is decent, but the script could have been better written, the two main characters' stories never get satisfyingly developed. If this was directed by John McTiernan as originally planned, this would have been a great movie. Sadly, instead we got the guy who did Daredevil and he once again delivered a bland, uninspiring product. Acting is OK, Travolta did his best to hold a consistent accent (it was the wrong accent, but hey!) throughout the movie, while DeNiro looked more like he was only concerned with the paycheck.

All in all, the movie is not terrible, I guess it wouldn't kill you to watch it if you have nothing better to do for an hour and a half. The sad part is that this could have been a much, much better movie, perhaps even a classic.