Being really cool and bad ass isn’t something that’s as easy to achieve those days, compared to how it was back in in the eighties. We have seen it all already. Maybe that’s why Killer Elite tries to go back to the roots, when our cold killers they real macho men, with their code of own code of honor and all. The story, the action, and the general feel of the movie remind us about the eighties as well, with a no-nonsense Jason Statham and Clive Owen against each other’s throat in a deadly and frantic chase.

Killer Elite is actually the fight of two different groups of “killer elites”: Danny (Jason Statham) a retired member of Britain’s Elite Special Air Service and his team is forced to go back to action against Spike (Clive Owen) and his SAS companions. SAS was the elite team of British Secret Service during World War Two, and they did some unsavory stuff in Middle East, that’s why a rich sheik wants some of their members to get murdered because of a personal vendetta against them. Killer Elite is based on t true story, but it hardly feels like a documentary, it’s rather a tense action thriller with the story based in the sixties.

Forced to pull the trigger

Based on real events or not, the story of Killer Elite is still your classic action thriller story, with the main hero wanting to get out from the killing business, but still forced back to action as his best friend, Hunter (Robert De Niro) is taken hostage. Statham and De Niro as just doing their job, fortunetaly it’s Clive Owen who saves the movie , as the bad ass, but still human SAS agent.

With a frightening false left eye Owen gives a very good performance and outplays easily Statham, who is acting like he didn’t left the Transporter movies at all. Added to those two we have and old and tired De Niro, who plays De Niro as usual without any real effort or conviction.

A peaceful killer

Killer Elite will really please to those who like the classical action movies of the eighties. It’s most definetaly without tons of CGI effects and incredible action, so don’t expect John Woo or Mission Impossible here. Even if there the action scenes are really tense or exciting, it stays in the world of realism.

Pity the movie also doens’t shy away form the naivity and simplicity which was also the caracteristic of those old school movies: our main hero is good boy at heart and doesn’t want to kill his targets or their men. It doesn’t mean he won’t kick their asses, but he won’t kill them, because, you know, he’s a good boy. So Killer Elite is as old school as it gets, if you like the genre, you’ll like it.

-BadSector-