Killer Elite
1 1/2 stars out of 4
Rated: 14A
On paper, Killer Elite promises “action thrills of the highest order,” as breathlessly proclaimed by the TIFF program guide for its recent festival debut.
It stars Jason Statham, Clive Owen and Robert De Niro as professional score-settlers of various vintages and shifting motivations, and the three actors dutifully acquired facial hair and polished their shooting and snarling skills in preparation for their roles.
But what we see on the screen doesn’t live up to the hype. Clumsily directed by Gary McKendry and poorly written by Matt Sherring, rookies both, the convoluted movie collapses under the weight of its own clichés.
The plot might charitably be described as a fatal collision between RED and Mission: Impossible, in that retired and/or jaded spies/soldiers/assassins are required to perform tasks of such ridiculous complexity that even Rube Goldberg might throw up his hands in despair.
Here’s the plot, brutally condensed: ex-assassin Danny (Statham) decides to quit the business after a bungled Mexican hit and live large in the outback of Australia. You can’t blame him — his farm girlfriend Anne (Yvonne Strahovski) is a real hottie.
“I’m done with killing,” he says. But wait for the boomerang rejoinder from a cookie-cutter character: “Yeah, well maybe killing isn’t done with you.”
Sure enough, Danny is yanked back into the fray by an Omani sheikh (Rodney Afif) who wants a few guys whacked to avenge the death of his sons.
He’s holding a hostage to get Danny’s attention: his ex-partner Hunter (De Niro), who is in a very bad mood. (Maybe his paycheque for this gig arrived late.)
The job seems simple enough, except for two teensy catches. Danny has to make his hits look like accidents so the sheikh doesn’t get fingered.
And the guys he’s supposed to ice are ex-SAS soldiers, led by a hard-ass named Spike (Owen), whose mustache is the scariest part of the movie.
What ensues is a blur of car chases, flying bullets and such deathless dialogue as “welcome to hell.”
The requirement to make dirty deeds look like accidents results in such laughable weapons as a caveman club made out of bathroom tiles, to make it seem that a bad guy fatally slipped in the shower.
When all else fails, these boys just pound the crap out of each other.
Killer Elite is, of course, “based on a true story” and also a book by Ranulph Fiennes called The Feather Men — the title of which is explained with the same head-slapping obviousness as the screen notations that tell us Paris is in France and London is in the United Kingdom. Duh!
The real casualties of Killer Elite are the brain cells of people watching it.
Peter Howell is a syndicated movie critic with the Toronto Star.