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Men In Black 3

It’s not a sequel that needed to be made, but thanks to the charm of its leads and a tone that harks back to the wit and humour of the original, it’s a pretty enjoyable trip.

Bel Ami

The excellent female support cast saves this patchy effort, which is let down by its leading man and a flat screenplay.

The Dictator

A disappointing, often repulsive and mean-spirited mess of a film with seemingly only one real criterion on its agenda: to shock and offend.

The Woman In Black

Packed with atmosphere, this old-fashioned but deftly told ghost story delivers ample chills and thrills.

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The Killer Elite (Film)

by Joshua Blackman | February 20, 2012 16:09 | Edited February 20, 2012 16:10

It’s formulaic, but it’s also packed with atmosphere, intrigue and the charm of a veteran action cast.

Jason Statham is one of the best action heroes we have. Athletic, chiselled and with a scary, detached cool, he's the B-movie hero that Steven Segal and Jean Claude Van Damme wished they were. His latest is Killer Elite, an enjoyably retro spin on eighties thrillers stuffed with political intrigue, brutal fist fights, and shadow meetings of mysterious men. Formulaic but impressively produced, it's on the more serious end of the Statham spectrum, but with enough action-flair to satiate fans of his more outlandish work (at one point, Statham hurls himself out of a window while tied to a chair).

 

The story is very loosely based on Sir Ranulph Fiennes' pseudo-factual 1991 novel, The Feather Men, and sees Statham as a hitman compelled to take one last job in order to save his mentor (a gruff Robert De Niro), who's being held captive by a sheikh in Oman. The assignment - to eliminate three former SAS agents who were responsible for the death of the sheikh's sons - draws the attention of a secret society of former operatives, especially a suave, mo-totin' Clive Owen, who faces off against a bloodied Statham in some ballsy mano-a-mano confrontations. It's mostly pedestrian stuff, with murky storytelling from first-time director Gary McKendry and a script that can't decide whether it's a B-grade romp or a gritty political thriller.

 

Even if the fights are shot too haphazardly, as is the norm in contemporary action cinema, the film has an atmospheric, grimy sheen, with a good feel for the period (mostly London circa 1980, but also The Middle East and rural Victoria, where the film was partly shot). A subplot about Statham's relationship with his Australian girlfriend (Yvonne Strahovski) seems like an unnecessary distraction, but there's enough competence here from its charismatic cast to make Killer Elite a passable, occasionally intriguing hitman yarn.