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| Released: |
2011 |
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| Genre: |
ACTION
ADVENTURE
THRILLER
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| Origin: |
US/ Australia |
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| Colour: |
C |
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| Length: |
115 |
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Jason Statham fights again. |
Reviewed by Chris Tookey
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No relation to Sam Peckinpah’s movie of the same name, Killer Elite is a preposterously confused, super-macho action movie, in which it’s difficult to understand what’s happening, distinguish good guys from bad, or care what happens to any of them.
A hunky hit-man (Jason Statham, predictable, pictured left) is recruited by an Arab sheik to murder three British SAS-men who killed three of the Sheik’s sons. If our hero refuses the assignment, the Sheik will murder his mentor (Robert De Niro, slumming), currently languishing in a desert dungeon.
Not only has Danny to make his assassinations look like accidents, he has to take on the mysterious “Feather Men”, a group of bankers and businessmen who allegedly protect the SAS and employ a shadowy agent (Clive Owen, wasted, pictured right) to do their dirty work. “None of us wants blood on our pinstripes,” remarks one of the old chaps.
Why do SAS commandoes need geriatrics to look after them? We are never told. The film may be “based on a true story”, but is deeply implausible throughout.
Several action sequences are more silly than exciting, especially one where Statham, strapped to a chair, escapes by somersaulting through an upstairs window and through sheer good fortune lands on top of a truck.
In between fights, shot and edited so frenetically you can’t see what’s happening, much tough-guy dialogue is spoken, most of it nonsensical. I particularly enjoyed the mysteriously scatological “Shit happens when you play in the deep end of the pool”.
Ninety minutes in, Danny’s pretty but dull Australian girl-friend (Yvonne Strahovski') echoed my thoughts exactly when she implored him “When will this be over?”
But there’s almost half an hour of incomprehensible plotting still to come. The distinguished critic beside me kept moaning audibly and left early, shaking his head. I stayed, in the hope that things would improve. They didn’t.
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, inspired by the book The Feather Men by Ranulph Fiennes
