What is it with Hollywood’s fascination with reworking the profession of being a contract killer and turning it into it being a community of cartoon lunatics with weird personality tics? I guess we can lay the blame at the feet of the James Bond henchman who set the gold standard for murderers for hire with a flair for the absurd with the fling of a bowler hat or the chomp of some metal teeth. Since then, more movies than I could probably mention has employed this trope and the latest of these is The Killer’s Game, a typically exaggerated look at the world of assassins through the blood streaked lens of a violent action comedy.
However, considering that this sort of thing is more well worn than a movie about a weathered hitman with a heart of gold (oh no wait, this movie has that too), can an above average cast manage to elevate such a standard concept into something that… kills?
Joe Flood (no, really) is one of the best contract killers around, but after his latest job at a dance performance in Budapest goes slightly tits up, he consoles himself with the fact that an act of kindness that sees him get dancer Maize out safely (from a mess he’s caused) eventually nets him her phone number. Despite usually being a solitary sort due to his employment, Joe has had enough of the life and is actively looking to retire, so he takes a chance, rings Maize and before you know it, he’s found himself in a healthy, loving relationship that not even his rather intense headaches can put a dampener on.
Oh hold on, wait a minute… actually those headaches can put a dampener on things when a trip to the doctors to sort it out reveals that he has Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and virtually has only around three months to live. Faced with such news, Joe does what anyone would do in this situation. He ends things with Maize, goes to his friend and handler, Zvi, and tries to put a hit out on himself in some form of retroactive self-euthanasia to spare himself the lack of dignity that comes of dying of a neurological disorder. However, when his friend refuses, he takes even more extreme measures and visits hated enemy and rival handler Marianna Antoinette to do the job instead with a big, fat, juicy payment of two million dollars on the table and aftervthe deal goes through, all he has to do is wait.
However, a call back from the doctors office proves that Joe is either the luckiest or unluckiest man around considering on your point of view. You see, thanks to a massive snaffu with his test, it seems that Joe hasn’t got Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease at all and is in perfect health. The catch is that he still has a gaggle of flamboyant Killer’s clamouring for his two million hit and Antoinette hates him so much, not only does she refuse to cancel the hit, she even sweetens the deal with her own cash. Before you know it, colourful characters with names like the Mackenzie Brothers, The Party Girls and Lovedahl Gasevich are gunning for him and – by association – Maize; can Joe survive long enough to enjoy his new lease on life?
If The Killer’s Game dips deep and eagerly into the oft used trope of an exaggerated hitman community, it also seems to take great care to not deliver a single original idea while it’s doing it. Director J.J. Perry isn’t exactly new to indulging himself in rambunctious world building that feels suspiciously familiar thanks to Netflix vampire comedy Day Shift and while his latest flick isn’t as willfully ludicrous as that horror/comedy/action romp, you may very well feel like a serious attack of deja vu coming on as The Killer’s Game goes through the motions.
However, while memories of such films as Smokin’ Aces, Bullet Train, John Wick and many, many more movies that feature a highly eccentric criminal network that doesn’t make a whole load of logical sense, at least the film manages to paste over a multitude of cracks by featuring some nifty violence and a legitimately interesting cast which helps the unoriginality go down far smoother than it should. For example, while most movies of its kind would go for a Ryan Reynolds type to accentuate the comic book style craziness of the plot, what we get here is a typically stoic performance by Dave Bautista who attempts to match the comedy with a spot of gravitas that doesn’t entirely fit with the tone of the piece. While it’s nice that he seems to be trying to single handedly bring back the 80s style concept of a gargantuan-sized proffesional killer who is inexplicably impossible to hit with a bullet despite being roughly the size of a small shed, his more softly softly approach actually works quite well when it comes to his romance with Sofia Boutella’s romantic lead and the movie almost veers into gentle rom-com territory during its first third. Joining them is a cast made up of the familiar likes of Ben Kingsley (armed with a Russian accent), a snappily dressed Terry Crews, a villainous Pom
Klementieff and even martial arts wonderkind Scott Adkins murdering a Scottish accent with far more aggression that he does any prospective victims and this assorted group of faces (which also randomly includes Alex Kingston and Dylan Moran) does actually keep you locked in even if the shift from edgy rom-com to frentic action comedy is hardly subtle.
While the comedy doesn’t score the big belly laughs some might hope (the big joke for Adkins and his on-screen brother played by WWE wrestler Drew McIntyre is that they’re so Scottish that they require subtitles), the action is slick enough to compensate with a mix of shooting, punching and a bit of exploding. But the longer the film goes on, the more uncertain it seems to get about it’s tone which goes as far as to include one hitman whose fighting style seems to echo a love of flamenco dancing and he even goes as far as to listen to music as he brawls and while it’s a nifty idea, it and some other things in the rather wacky climax doesn’t exactly fit in with how the movie starts.
Still, as a disposable watch, The Killer’s Game isn’t a bad shout, it’s just a deeply unoriginal one that only would feel fresh and innovative if you’d just woken up from a coma with the memory of every action comedy wiped from your brain. I like Dave Bautista and I’m glad he’s still getting lead roles and the same goes for Sofia Boutella too, but The Hunter’s Game is yet another half-baked vehicle for them both that despite its sparkly cast, feels more like the kind of movie that debuts on Netflix or Amazon Prime.
It has its moments and it’ll assassinate two hours with a minimum of fuss, but The Killer’s Game isn’t one you’ll want to play more than once…
🌟🌟🌟
We Have Issues 