The Killer's Game

As with many other genres that Hollywood has produced, the genre of assassins and mercenaries have grown over the many years. Most of these films are typically written as a straight drama, but the director Guy Ritchie produced a number of these films with a comedic overtone to them. Now we are offered "The Killer's Game" that also has the same humorous overtone which definitely worked well.

This film follows veteran assassin Joe Flood (Dave Bautista), who is diagnosed with a neurological life-threatening illness with only three months to live, and so authorizes a kill on himself through the handler that's gone rogue, Antoinette (Pom Klementieff) to avoid the pain that is destined to follow. After ordering the kill, Joe finds out that he was misdiagnosed and must then fend off the army of former colleagues, including Angus Mackenzie (Scott Adkins), Rory Mackenzie (Drew McIntyre), Lovedaal (Terry Crews), Goyang (Le Hoon) and others, attempting to kill him for a two million dollar price tag. 

Others to round out the cast are Sofia Boutella as Maize Arnaud, Joe's girlfriend, Ben Kingsley as Joe's handler, George Somner as Money, Alex Kingston as Sharon, Lucy Cork as Ginny, Marko Zabor as Emilio 'El Botas' and Daniel Bernhardt as Radovan. 

This was slickly directed with grit by J.J. Perry ("Day Shift" '22) plus 151 films performing stunts under his belt. Even though this filmmaker hasn't a plethora of directing experience, all his stunt work has certainly served him well. When viewing this film, I couldn't help but think of a Guy Ritchie film since this was edited and photographed  is a slick, high adrenaline, fast-paced sort of way, similar to that of Ritchie. I believe he studied Ritchie's work and assuredly succeeded in his development of this film. I have great respect for Ritchie's films, so this certainly worked for me. The way he was able to encourage Bautista to come across in a mild-mannered way while he's killing someone was interesting and gave it that comedy relief. If you like his brand of directing, his :Afterburn" is in post production. It was executed well by writers James Coyne ("Vikingdom" '13, "Puncture Wounds" '14) plus a short and Simon Kinberg ("xXx: State of the Union" '05, "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" '05, "X-Men: The Last Stand" '06, "Jumper" '08, "Sherlock Holmes" '09, "This Means War" '12, "X-Men: Days of Future Past" '14, "Fantastic Four" '15, "X-Men: Apocalypse" '16, "X-Men: Dark Phoenix" '19, "The 355" '22) plus TV movies and TV, based on the novel by Jay Bonansinga. Certainly with the amount of experience in the writing realm here, this script was fairly well put together. The only aspect that seemed to have not worked well was that there were a few areas where what was happening in a particular scene truly couldn't have worked, otherwise the screenplay was well thought out. The stunts by Troy Robinson and Justin Yu were incredible, but with a director that has a plethora of stunt work under his belt, the stunts should be good. 

Not to take away from this director--he certainly directed this with intense clarity, but if you like Guy Ritchie films, you'll love this. It has it all: action, comedy, high-adrenaline, explosiveness and even heart all rolled up in this roller coaster ride. Dave Bautista has certainly proved once again that he can hold a film together just by his presence, and with a good script. 

Out of 4 Stars: 3                                        Rated: R                                      104mins.