Killer Elite
It’s tough being a globetrotting assassin. You spend a lot of time lurking in
dusty, sweaty third world regimes, eating crap food and gunning down dodgy
foreign types in front of their innocent, blood-spattered, doe-eyed children.
Plus there’s no healthcare package, no pension plan.
So, it’ll come as no surprise (particularly if you’ve
ever seen any action movie in the last 30 years about a sympathetic
international assassin) that, after plugging his latest bad guy in front of the
afore-mentioned doe-eyed, innocent child, mercenary-cum-assassin Danny (Jason
Statham) gets an attack of guilt, hangs up his guns and runs off to the Aussie
bush (mainly because the Aussies stumped up the film’s budget) where in the
tradition of tough but sensitive ex-assassins he tries to put his past behind
him by renovating a farmhouse and getting himself a superfluous girlfriend (Chuck’s
Yvonne Strahovski) from the farm next door.
Grand Designs might be a
ratings winner on TV, but who goes to see Jason Statham movies to watch him
build his dream home? When his
mentor and friend Hunter (Robert De Niro) is kidnapped by an Omani oil sheik Danny’s
lured back into action. The deal
is simple; if Danny kills the men responsible for the deaths of the sheikh’s
sons, after videotaping their confessions, Hunter goes free. The only problem is the targets are all
former members of the SAS and they’re protected by the “Feather Men,” a secret
society of vigilante ex-SAS men led by Clive Owen’s Spike. Cue satisfyingly bone-crunching
violence as Danny and his pals arrange grisly accidents for their targets while
Spike and his pals try to stop them.
Based on a ‘factional’ novel by posho polar explorer,
former SAS man and fingerless wonder, Sir Ranlph Fiennes, and sharing nothing
but the title with Sam Peckinpah’s 1975 film, Killer Elite is an
enjoyably daft throwback to the macho shoot-‘em-up, action thrillers of the
‘80s (it’s even set in 1980) where tough guy actors like Charles Bronson and
Lee Marvin would spend the entire film knocking hell out of each other while
developing a grudging respect bordering on the homoerotic.
The script is dumb but does the job. Britain’s ties to the Oman regime of
the ‘70s and the rights and wrongs of the SAS’s grubby little desert war there
are explored in absolutely no depth but who cares? If you want to know what happened over there watch the
Military History channel which seems to show documentaries about the SAS on an
everlasting Moebius strip. The
attention to detail and period setting are authentically adequate (though they
missed a trick not packing the soundtrack full of New Romantic classics) and
it’s amazing how refreshing it is to see an action/spy thriller where the
characters don’t spend half the film on mobile phones or tracking each other
through the Internet (no Girl Who Surfed T’Interweb for three increasingly
convoluted and tedious films here) and instead get their information in an old
school style. By beating the
living Jesus out of someone.
The characters are nicely ambiguous, with both Statham
and Owen putting in moody, intense performances as the rival tough guys,
honourable men in a dishonourable world, each admirable in their own way, while
Robert De Niro employs the same autopilot he’s been on ever since 1998’s Ronin. The lights are on but really no-one’s
home. I kept expecting him to
check his phone to see if Michael Mann or Martin Scorsese had called. Much of the dialogue is laughably bad
and the film doesn’t just rely on action movie clichés (the kidnapped father
figure, the honourable assassin, etc), it’s built entirely from them but it
crowbars in enough gun battles, car chases and bruising fight scenes to hold
the attention and let’s face it; it’s unlikely you’re watching Killer Elite for
the pithy repartee. You’re
watching it because there’s a scene where Jason Statham beats up two guys and
escapes by jumping out of a window while tied to a
chair. You’re watching it because
you want to see Jason Statham and Clive Owen beat the crap out of each other. You’re watching it because sometimes,
regardless of what The Guardian or your significant other thinks, there’s just
nothing better than a big, dumb, beer and popcorn movie.
And if you’re still sitting on the fence, wondering if
you’ll like Killer Elite, allow me to reiterate; Jason
Statham beats up two guys while he’s tied to a chair! That’s really all you need to know.
David Watson
Director
Gary McKendry
Cast
Jason Statham, Clive Owen, Robert De
Niro, Dominic Purcell, Aden Young, Yvonne Strahovski
Written by
Matt Sheering, based on the novel
The Feather Men by Sir Ranulph Fiennes
Country
USA/Australia
Running time
116min
Year
2011
Certificate
15
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