Killer Elite Review

Jason Statham’s latest guns-and-muscles film, Killer Elite, based on a book by Ranulph Fiennes and directed by Gary McKendry, was released last week. Is it standard popcorn fodder or is there more going on than in the average action flick?

After killing a father in front of his child on an operation, Danny (Statham) decides that he doesn’t want to be a mercenary anymore and retires to Australia to build a house. A year later, however, he is pulled back in by a sheikh who wants revenge on three SAS operatives who killed his sons. As an incentive, he’s holding Danny’s mentor, Hunter (Robert De Niro), hostage. Not only does he want the deaths to look like accidents, he also wants taped confessions. Former SAS man Spike (Clive Owen) is tasked with stopping Danny.

I cannot in good conscience review this film without first commenting on its obsession with male hirsuteness. This film should have been called Men With Ridiculous Facial Hair. Its actual title is hugely misleading seeing as more or less everyone bar Robert De Niro manages to cock up killing someone at some point during the film’s 116 minutes’ running time. What is in evidence, however, are what must be a record-breaking number of preposterous moustaches and beards for one film. Clive Owen’s moustache looks half-hearted and De Niro’s beard looks scruffy and uncared-for, but credit to Dominic Purcell as Danny’s mate, whom I decided to label “Lemmy’s Brother”, for his incredible mutton chops.

As an action film, Killer Elite ticks all the boxes – there’s guns, explosions, car chases, rooftop chases, fistfights and swearing galore. It’s when it tries to go all political that cracks appear which, with a more experienced writer and director, might have been papered over. Spike’s superiors are an organisation called the Feather Men. We don’t really know who they are or why they’re there – they’re pulling all the strings but we forget about them later on, so they can’t have been that important. They may have had something to do with a war in Oman. Or not. God knows. In addition, one guy, apparently from somewhere unconnected to either Danny or Spike (possibly the Feather Men), turns up during their interrogation scene, talks for a bit and then gets killed almost straightaway. I have no idea who he was or why he was there. I think he may have been knocking around before, but the multitude of Men With Ridiculous Facial Hair and wishy-washy direction means it’s difficult to tell. And did we really need a love interest who adds nothing to the plot apart from complication and pointlessness?

In fact, the script as a whole is pretty atrocious. Matt Sherring, take this as a subtle hint. NEVER write another screenplay. Could you not have come up with an alternative line to “Killing’s easy...the hard part’s living with it”? It’s far too long, with several unnecessary twists. When Statham, tied to a chair, flips over in midair to land on the back of a prostrate Owen with crushing force, it could have ended for me. I was entirely satisfied. But it didn’t. At least Aden Young (playing another of Danny’s mates, Meier), who couldn’t decide if his character was German, American, Dutch or Australian, got killed off relatively early.

Its deep political aspirations are admirable, but I shouldn’t be getting confused during a Jason Statham film. It could have been done better. 

2.5/5