Killer Elite (2011)

(On Cable TV, sometime around May 2012) It’s surprising to see how quickly a film can affirm its dull unspectacular barely-exciting nature. So it is that Killer Elite takes us back to 1970s England in order to present a semi-thrilling story something supposedly based on true events. But never mind that last part; the only thing inspired by true event seems to be the serious rainy atmosphere in which the entire film is bathed. While Robert De Niro, Jason Statham and Clive Owen are a spectacular union of tough-guy heroes, Killer Elite doesn’t seem interested in most of them: De Niro is barely on-screen for fifteen minutes, Owen is hampered in a bad-guy role while Statham plays nothing more (or less) than his usual screen persona. Still, the script doesn’t give any of them much to do. The directing is competent but unspectacular, and that goes for Killer Elite in general. The script gets needlessly complicated by the end, and it’s really the actors who carry the film to the finish line. I had to go back and review my year-end notes in order to realize that I hadn’t actually reviewed Killer Elite upon initially viewing it, and I’ll let that speak for itself.