Killers

Viewer Rating:simonconnolly has rated Killers rating: 1 Star

I just saw Killers and I genuinely don't know if I should hate it more than I love it. I hate it cause it is a really dreadful film. I like it as if this doesn't make Hollywood studios give up making romantic comedy then I don't know what will. Every year I'd say about 15-20 films just like this are released and maybe only 1 or 2 are actually worth taking a look at. But this year has been especially poor for the genre and they are finally starting to do as bad at the box office as they have with critics. So hopefully the only thing Killers has actually killed is the rom-com genre of cinema, and I for one won't miss it.

In Killers an undercover, womanising government hired hitman Spencer meets the recently dumped, beautiful and fun loving Jen. And so he gives up his exciting life of women, flashy cars and exotic places for a boring domestic life with Jen. The film cuts forward three years and the pair are still living a perfect life together. Then the morning after Spencers 30th birthday they realise he now has a stupidly high bounty of 20 million dollars on his head. And it turns out that basically everyone in the pairs life from their friends to their co-workers are actually assassins who are now fighting it out to claim the bounty. And so the pair try to discover who set the bounty, while also trying to save their marriage.

It's been a so-so year so far for comedies but this, along with Old Dogs, is a contender for the worst of them. It tries desperately to be like the very average Mr and Mrs Smith but fails miserably. Advertised as an action comedy it doesn't have enough of either to remain engaging. The first half of the film is incredibly dull and just shows the main characters equally boring life together. Then the bounty is set and the second half of the film is filled with sloppy action scenes and irritatingly uncoordinated fight sequences. It's completely unbelievable that every single person in their life would be sleeper assassins doing three years of undercover work.

The film really does fail on all accounts. The comedy is pretty much non existent. There are maybe one or two lines in the entire film which brought an ever so slight smile to my face. Every other joke quite simply fails. The action as I previously mentioned is sloppy, poorly orchestrated and unspectacular. The first fight scene was decent before it was interrupted by Heigl and her high pitched squealing, and it all went downhill from there. And the action also completely ruins the romantic aspect. I mean it's impossible to follow, relate to or even just care about this couple and all their problems when their squabbles crammed in between scenes of them brutally murdering all their friends and neighbors.

And the one thing which seals it's fate and convinces me it will make my worst of list at the end of the year was the ending. I guessed the ending about 15 minutes in but thought to myself that it was just too stupid to actually be it. Turns out I was right and its a shame that it involved such three great actors... and Ashton Kutcher I guess.

Kutcher basically plays the same role as always, which is a terrible thing. Whenever Heigl challenges something ridiculous he does he just says "That's my training". Heigl is not much better and I genuinely think she deserves better roles. She screams and moans a lot which soon gets annoying. And as a pair Kutcher and Heigl were very poor. They weren't funny, charming and they had no chemistry. A lot of the time a rom-coms supporting cast can often save the film but even comedy legends Tom Selleck and Catherine O'Hara, and some more modern stars couldn't muster a laugh. And there's even a disgracefully atrocious and unnecessary cameo from Usher.

So all in all this is a truly dreadful film and the more I write about it the more I'm certain it is the years worst film, no easy feat considering what we've been subjected to doth far. The cast deserved better than this as director Luketic tries to make a good action-packed, romantic and funny film and fails in every aspect. The romance is dull and pretentious, the action unexciting and the comedy entirely unfunny and what we are left with, and subjected to can only be described as an ordeal.

Review published on the 09 June 2010 02:20