Killer Elite by Gary McKendry on Netflix
My rating: 7 out of 10 stars
Loosely based on a true story, Killer Elite pits two of the worlds’ most elite operatives – Danny, a ruthless killer-for-hire (Jason Statham) and Hunter, his longtime mentor (Robert De Niro) – against the cunning leader of a secret society of former Special Air Service operatives(‘Clive Owen’). Covering the globe from Australia to Paris, London and the Middle East, Danny and Hunter are plunged into a highly dangerous game of revenge and deception – where things are not always what they appear to be
This is a fairly decent thriller / action flick. Jason Statham is making a pretty okay performance although I have to say that I liked Clive Owen as the hunter determined to stop Danny & Co from killing former SAS operatives better.
The story is actually giving me a few gripes in that some shitty Arab Sheik and his rather useless son is forcing Danny to kill off SAS operatives. I have quite a few reservations about that. The sheik in question did not get exactly what he wanted in the end at least.
However, getting over that part, it is a quite decent action story. Statham is making a quite okay performance as the reluctant “hero”. I put hero in quotes here since on one side he is trying to save his old friend, which is a good thing, and at the same time he is killing of the good guys, SAS operatives, which to me is a bad thing.
Nevertheless it makes for some good action. Sometimes I felt that the behaviour of Danny and his friends were a bit amateurish though, relying more on brute force and good luck than actual skills.
The “secret society” was a nice touch although, to me, the main benefit of this movie was the clash between Statham trying to fulfil his “mission” and Spike trying to prevent him from doing so.
Robert De Niro was, not unsurprisingly, doing a good performance but his role was more of a side role most of the time.
I watched it with my oldest son on Netflix and it was a good use of our evening in front of the TV-set. Not great but quite entertaining nonetheless.
PG's Ramblings 