Just like Sex & The City movies and most romantic comedies are fairytales for grown-up girls, action movies like Killer Elite are fairytales for grown-up boys.
Even though I’m not a boy nor completely grown-up, I got a kick out of watching it.
It opens in 1980 with de Niro, Statham and a dog that’s better-looking than both of them.
Aussie actor Lachy Hulme plays a great role and is once again a bit of an accidental scene-stealer cos he’s just so damn good.
I was delighted to hear Radio Birdman in the soundtrack.
But I was pretty much done with hearing the word ‘done’ uttered as many times in the dialogue as the F bomb was in Scarface.
The purist lover of this high concept action genre will recognise and enjoy the way a popcorn movie like this strikes the right chords. There is an alpha male who is a kinda bad guy and a kinda good guy (Jason Statham). There’s an idealized dad-son relationship personified by a father figure and mentor he dearly loves (Robert de Niro). He’s a man the leading alpha male would do anything to protect. And there’s also the good-as-gold girlfriend whose hissy fits are small, whose heart is huge and whose home-cookin’ down on the farm is the perfect retreat for him and it keeps her shut away from the rest of the big bad world like a blissful domestic slave (Yvonne Strahovski).
Killer Elite has a killer opening sequence if you love 2nd unit directing which I do. There’s also a stunt involving Statham’s character that has him tied to a chair and executing a gymnastic move that is worth seeing on the big screen. I always get excited to see something I haven’t seen before.
Because this is an adult fairytale – in the end, the alpha male restores equilibrium to the world, he gets the girl and they all live happily ever after – til the next mission. And those last 4 words are what separates the grown-up boy fairytale from the grown-up girl fairytale.
The validation of a classic male fantasy is signed, sealed and delivered. Or for a faster more monosyllabic way to sum it up – it’s done.
Plot problems and anachronisms aside, Killer Elite accomplishes its mission.
It’s in cinemas from Thur Feb 23. Here’s the trailer: