By Christy Lemire, The Associated Press
In “Killer Elite,” the noisy intensity and frequency of skull bashings and pistol whippings and gut punches don’t register as anything beyond generic action-picture violence. The fact that director and co-writer Gary McKendry has shot all these brawls with the usual shaky cam and cut them in quick, choppy fashion only adds to how forgettable the film is.
You’d think a movie starring Robert De Niro, Clive Owen and Jason Statham would be one you’d want to remember. But in “Killer Elite,” they’re just cogs in a clichéd revenge tale.
Statham stars as Danny, the typical special-ops, killing-machine-for-hire Statham tends to play. At the film’s start in 1979, he and his mentor, Hunter (De Niro), are lying in wait for their target in an industrial section of Mexico. The assignment goes horribly wrong and Danny swears this is the last one, he’s done. But we all know how these things turn out: There has to be that tried-and-true One Last Job.
A year later, Hunter has been abducted by a dying sheikh and is being held in Oman. Danny must flee the pastoral idyll of the rural Australian valley where he’s ensconced himself with his beautiful girlfriend (Yvonne Strahovski) to perform the duty that will ensure Hunter’s freedom. Danny is ordered to kill the men responsible for the deaths of the sheikh’s three sons, but he has to get videotaped confessions from all three, and he has to make their deaths look like accidents.
No problem: Danny amasses the obligatory ragtag team of rogues and is on his way. But they have to infiltrate the British Secret Air Service to get the job, which draws the attention of a shadowy protective society known as The Feather Men. (“Killer Elite” is based on a book called “The Feather Men,” which supposedly was based on a true story, by Ranulph Fiennes, who appears as a character later on.)
This makes Danny the target of the secret group’s main enforcer, a former SAS solider named Spike (Owen), and the usual shootouts and car chases ensue.
When Statham and Owen finally meet in the showdown, it’s rendered in such dizzying, adrenalized style that it’s hard to tell who’s doing what to whom. Additionally, McKendry favors a steely gray color scheme that, in theory, is meant to reflect the cold-heartedness of these characters and their world, but actually just smothers everything in a bland sameness.
Statham, like the film itself, is muscular and efficient. But he seems awfully comfortable playing this kind of part by now.
De Niro stays locked up for big chunks of the movie but when we do see him, he radiates the ease and comfort of a man who has nothing to prove. And he gets to fire a machine gun, which is probably a lot of fun when you’re pushing 70, and might make “Killer Elite” more memorable for him than it will be for the audience.
‘KILLER ELITE’
Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes.
Rating: R for strong violence, language and some sexuality/nudity.