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Over more than a decade of making movies like The Transporter and Crank, Jason Statham has become the go-to guy for adrenaline junkies. If you’re looking for action, you can count on Statham to deliver. Just don’t expect anything more from his latest thriller.
In Killer Elite, Statham stars as Danny, a gun for hire who decided to call it quits after taking a bullet. Just a year after retiring, though, he finds himself back on the job. His old friend and mentor, Hunter (Robert De Niro), has been taken captive for trying to skip out on an assignment, and the only way to save him is to finish the job.
An exiled sheikh sends Danny to avenge the murders of his three sons by killing three skilled British Special Forces operatives. Danny calls in a couple of old friends to help him out—but, as they track their targets, they’re closely followed by Spike (Clive Owen), a member of a secret organization who wants to stop them.
With its shady characters, its frantic action, and its super-cool star, Killer Elite is pretty much everything you’d expect from any Jason Statham thriller—only with the added appeal of co-stars De Niro and Owen. It isn’t exactly a brilliant action movie. The dialogue is sometimes a bit silly—and, for top-notch professional assassins, Danny and his men are often shockingly bad at blending in and operating under the radar. But that doesn’t really matter.
What matters is that Statham is as smooth as ever as the level-headed hit man with a heart of gold. He doesn’t say much, but he doesn’t really have to. As long as he scowls a lot and takes down everyone who stands in his way, he’s done his job—and he certainly succeeds here.
Unfortunately, though, Statham’s big-name co-stars don’t bring anything special to the film. Both De Niro and Owen feel rather unnecessary—and neither performance is especially noteworthy. Still, both beloved actors eventually get a moment or two to shine—and, if nothing else, at least they bring a little more star power to an otherwise generic action movie.
Really, then, the film’s greatest flaw is that it tries to tell a story. That’s understandable, since it’s based on actual events (as told by Sir Ranulph Fiennes in his book, The Feather Men). But the complex plotlines about military cover-ups and mysterious secret societies don’t really add much to the film. In fact, they do little more than drag out the runtime while stealing precious minutes away from the film’s real attraction (which, of course, is the frenzied Jason Statham action).
If you’re looking for an unforgettable, award-worthy thriller, this isn’t it. But if you’re just looking for the adrenaline rush that a Jason Statham movie always delivers, you won’t be disappointed.
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