We’re late to the party on Killer Elite. But it’s certainly not a chick flick and frankly, it will probably be out of theaters faster than Jason Statham could kick your a$$. From this chick’s perspective, Statham is one of the two things this movie has going for it. The other is Clive Owen. Beyond that, it’s pretty much a mess. Supposedly it’s based on a true story. Um, okay if they say so. What that story is, I’m not sure and I didn’t really care enough to Google it and find out.
The plot seems to exist solely to move us from one fight scene to another but here’s the basic breakdown… Statham plays Danny, a former special ops agent who gets pulled back into the business when his mentor, Hunter (Robert De Niro) is taken captive by a Middle Eastern sheik. In order to secure Hunter’s freedom, Danny must kill the three men who killed the sheik’s three sons. The trick is he needs to make it all look like an accident, and he needs to get an on-camera confession from each of them before he kills them. Oh, and did I mention that each of these three men are former British SAS agents? But wait there’s more – there is a secret military society looking out for these former agents and they’ve dispatched their own assassin, Spike (Owen) to take out Danny. Phew, I’m exhausted just writing it.
Really this movie is all about Statham and Owen kicking butt, shooting at each other, blowing things up, jumping out of windows while tied to chairs – yeah, seriously, and chasing each other. It’s just frantic and really not that much fun. And for those of you wondering if there are any women in the movie, yes there is one. But her character is completely inconsequential. Sigh.
By the way, I went to this movie with a guy friend and he wrote a review of it as well. So if you’d like the opinion of a “rooster” we respect, you can check it out here.