The Killer's Game - Reel Details

snynopsis

An assassin is diagnosed with a terminal illness and orders a hit on himself so his girlfriend can collect insurance proceeds.

runtime

1h 44m

Director

J.J. Perry

Cast

Dave Bautista, Sofia Boutella, Ben Kingsley, Pom Klementieff, Terry Crews

Parents' Guide

Bloody violences / cursing / brief nudity / brief drug use

bonus scenes

None

Plot Details

Warning! Spoilers ahead!

Joe Flood (Dave Bautista) assassinates a criminal during a ballet. During the post-assassination panic, Flood helps a ballet dancer named Maize (Sofia Boutella) who was trampled in the scrum. Not knowing Flood is the assassin, Maize thanks Flood for helping her.

He meets with his handler Zvi (Ben Kingsley) and receives his pay. He returns to his flat and discovers he’s accidentally kept Mazie’s cell phone. He tracks her to her studio and returns the phone. She asks him on a date. Flood at first does not want to but relents and makes plans with Maize for a date. The two spend time with each other, growing closer, while Flood continues to execute jobs. Maize thinks he’s into retirement planning and does not know he’s an assassin. He tells Zvi he wants to retire and needs a life insurance policy – thinking of Maize’s future. Flood starts to experience ringing in his ears, headaches, and double vision. After extensive testing, his doctor tells him he has Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and will die within 3 months.

Devastated by the news, he orders a hit on himself for $2MM (because the insurance policy will not pay out for suicide). Zvi will not accept the orders and tells him to find someone else. He goes to Marianna Antionette (Pom Klementieff), another handler, and orders the assassination. She gladly accepts the orders as she and Flood have a negative history with each other. Flood asks for the assassination window to open at midnight. He meets with Maize and tells her that he must leave town and they’ll never see each other again. Mazie, confused, leaves Flood.

As midnight approaches, Flood gets drunk and leaves a voicemail for Maize, explaining that he’s terminally ill. Flood’s doctor calls and tells him that there was a mix-up in the test results, and that he really wasn’t ill. He attempts to cancel the assassination but Marianna, hating Flood, doubles down and refuses to cancel it. Teams of assassins attempt to kill Flood, but he’s able to win each confrontation. Eventually, Maize is kidnapped and used as leverage to assassinate Flood. His bounty raises to $6MM.

During the final battle, a team of mercenaries turns on the assassin Lovedahl (Terry Crews). Lovedahl survives. Flood and Maize kill the mercs and escape. Zvi kills Marianna. Flood and Maize get married.

2.48 / 4.00

40/100

Re-watchability

70/100

Humor

70/100

Action

65/100

Drama

65/100

Acting

62/100

Snap Judgement

* average of other categories

The Killer's Game was confused on whether it should be serious or goofy.

The Killer’s Game is kind of a mess. The movie starts off seriously, but slowly becomes goofier. It’s almost as if they decided they wanted the movie to be serious and dark at the beginning, but decided to go a sillier direction and didn’t have the budget to do reshoots. However, the goofy humor was funny. It just felt misplaced because it had already set a dramatic and serious tone. By the end of the movie, it went completely bonkers. If I were to have watched the first 20 minutes and skipped the last 20 minutes, I would have thought they were completely different movies. I do believe that if they kept with the tone they set at the beginning of the movie, it would have been way more successful. They could have made it more like a John Wick knock off.

Throughout the movie, there was a long running joke about two Scottish men. Whenever they spoke, captions were displayed at the bottom of the screen. I understand why they did this because they did have heavy accents. However, I was able to understand what they were saying, and I read along while they were speaking. The captions did not say what the characters said. Some words would be changed, and sentences would be rearranged. Maybe the joke was supposed to be that they had such a heavy accent that even the captions couldn’t understand them. However, this joke is not apparent. Also, anytime they would say a curse word, they would completely skip over writing it. However, the last word that was said was a curse word and yet they wrote it. So, this whole joke was completely inconsistent.

Another thing I will complain about is Joe’s “condition”. Joe is a hitman who recently has been having headaches and other symptoms. He went to the doctor and found that he had a condition where he would slowly lose function of his body and eventually die. He does not want to go through this, so he hires a hitman to come and kill him when he is not expecting it. He found out later that the doctor switched the samples they used to test him, and he wasn’t actually dying. Now he has to fight off the people coming for him, so he can return to the woman he loves. With a condition as serious as that, it is absolutely insane that a doctor would mess it up. And this still doesn’t explain the constant headaches. Joe goes to his friend/boss’ house where his wife was trying to help Joe’s current condition. With no experience at all, she was able to crack his neck and fix the problems he’s been having for months. This is something that would never happen. She could have seriously hurt him. It was just a stupid resolution to a problem they didn’t want to deal with anymore.

In conclusion, The Killer’s Game was inconsistent to say the least. I believe that I would have liked it much more if they kept it more serious. It would have gotten rid of all the other problems I talked about.

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2.04 / 4.00

20/100

Re-watchability

48/100

Humor

67/100

Action

60/100

Drama

50/100

Acting

53/100

Snap Judgement

* average of other categories

Tonally confused, The Killer's Game is a weak attempt to exploit Wickonian style filmmaking.

A couple of weeks ago, Dave Bautista gave an interview in which he expressed his desire to be taken more seriously as an actor and to win awards. As part of his makeover, he decided to lose weight (muscle mass) so that he wouldn't appear as much like a meathead. This was a valiant goal for an actor who has not traditionally been taken seriously. It may have been a sincere effort, or perhaps it was all just part of the ruse in preparation for the release of The Killer's Game.

The movie is based on a 1997 novel of the same name. No, I have not read the book, so I can't comment on comparisons between the two. However, the film is tonally divergent. In the first 30-45 minutes, Bautista shows some acting range that we are not accustomed to seeing from him. I can’t say it's particularly good, but there's a serious side to it, and it's clear he wants to succeed in a dramatic performance. There are splashes of humor throughout the first half, but they are just that—mostly splashes of humor, and the film is not setting itself up to be a comedy. As the film progresses, the tone shifts from a drama focus to a goofy shoot-'em-up adventure. Many films successfully pull off tonal shifts, often with endings described as "bonkers" and the like. The Killer’s Game, however, just seems muddled.

When I read that the movie would feature Pom Klementieff, I hoped we would see some of the same playful interactions seen in the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise (Drax and Mantis). They try, but it just doesn’t work, and the quality of the humor falls flat in every context. The acting is more on the level of a straight-to-VHS 1994 action film. It’s not bad for what it ultimately is, but it’s not wide-release quality. The fight sequences were okay—I've seen plenty better and plenty worse. The visual effects, however, were mostly B-grade.

The concept itself has the potential to deliver a dramatic punch, but again, due to the tonal shift, it struggles to define itself. I believe that if the director had maintained the serious tone shown in the first 30-45 minutes throughout the entire film, the end product would have been better. Instead, the movie attempts to blend Wickonian-style lore with nearly slapstick humor in the second half. It just doesn’t work.

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