Killer Elite: Critic Reviews

The glossy topcoat provided by the paycheck participation of De Niro and Owen can't cover up the essential emptiness of the project.

[A] pileup of sub-Bourne action set pieces, sad laughs and cliches.

Jason Statham is matched with Robert de Niro and Clive Owen in this headcracking hitman yarn, but it's a bit overcomplicated for its own good.

Simultaneously silly and overwrought...

Gary McKendry hadn't directed a feature before this one, and you feel it. Any scene that fails to involve the revving of motors or the breaking of bones is dead.

Killer Elite is distinguished by one no-mercy, eye-gouging, testicle-punching brawl, and one whoppingly indifferent screenplay.

When Robert De Niro, Clive Owen and Jason Statham unite for an action thriller, we should be able to expect something special. Or at least memorable. Instead, "Killer Elite" gives us ordinary.

And quite the cliche-ridden desultory mess it is, too...

This is actually a pretty good thriller, based more on character and plot than on action for its own sake.

The script is a mess.

Pure punishment.

If you want some meaning with your mayhem, or even a good line of dialogue or two, look elsewhere.

With a B+ cast and a script full of pseudo-profound moral complexities, its aspirations are lofty and its achievements are trifling.

Statham is just good enough to make one wish he'd challenge himself.

If you're willing to accept "Killer Elite" as a shoot-'em-up action movie with good actors taking the spots of the usual lunk heads (but spouting the usual nonsense), you'll be pleased with the film.

A macho, adrenaline-fix suspenser that plays like the bigscreen equivalent of those pulpy spy novels that once clogged grocery-store checkouts.

It doesn't care if you like it, which is why I kind of do.

A decent yarn, decently told, a tough guy film built around veteran screen tough guys.

Clumsily directed by Gary McKendry and poorly written by Matt Sherring, rookies both, the convoluted movie collapses under the weight of its own cliches.

To be sure, first-time director Gary McKendry keeps things moving at an adrenalized pace, even through thickets of flashbacks. But this is precisely Killer Elite's major problem: motion at the expense of emotion.

I had a reasonably good time, on the whole...

Despite having a perfect cast for a title like Killer Elite, Gary McKendry's feature debut comes across as little more than a generic Jason Statham movie with two high-profile guest stars.

Strives to be a genuinely good film, but unwilling to let go of proven formulas, it falls short.

When Statham and Owen finally meet in the showdown you've been waiting for, it's rendered in such dizzying, adrenalized style that it's hard to tell who's doing what to whom.

The fun of Killer Elite, such as it is, is all in the hardass action. But there's nothing elite about this disposable time-killer.