MOVIE REVUE: Killer Elite, Not The Cream of the Crop

“Killing is easy. Living with it is the hard part,” says Danny Bryce, Jason Statham’s character in Killer Elite.

Though this nugget of wisdom is not imparted until well into the second half of the film, it’s a pretty good meter of what to expect in Gary McKendry’s  adaptation of Sir Ranulph Fiennes controversial ‘true adventure’ book The Feather Men. Published in 1991, the book originally claimed to be an account of an assassination plot against the British military officers allegedly responsible for killing the sons of an Omani sheikh during Britain’s unofficial campaign in the Middle East. Since then its factual accuracy has been picked to the bone and is now viewed predominantly as a work of fiction.

MOVIE REVUE: Some Things Can’t Be Fixed

 

Action movies are ones I have a guilty pleasure of looking forward to. They’re fun. 9 times out of 10 they’re mindless movies where you just watch things blow up on screen, car chases, gun fights, etc. So when I go to see an action movie I fully expect that the majority of the movie will consist of just that. It’s when you try to develop too much of a plot, and take yourself too seriously with such a weak premise where things seem to fall apart.

MOVIE REVUE: The Expendables + Low Expectations = Good Time

 

The 1980s were great years for American action movies and their advancement.  We cheered when John McClane went up against the 12 German terrorists in Die Hard.  Mel Gibson and Danny Glover showed us what it was like to be a mismatched cop team in Lethal Weapon.  The Cold War was forever metaphorically immortalized on film in Rocky IV via a boxing match between Rocky Balboa and Ivan Drago.  And who could forget Arnold Schwarzenegger’s oeuvre of action films – The Terminator, his Conan movies, Commando, Predator and countless others?  We experienced a renaissance of sorts back then.