|
Genre: Action/Comedy
Director: Robert Luketic
Cast: Ashton Kutcher, Katherine Heigl, Catherine O’Hara, Tom Selleck, Martin Mull, Rob Riggle, Casey Wilson, LeToya Luckett ,Katheryn Winnick, Sharan Masfield
RunTime: 1 hr 42 mins
Released By: Cathay-Keris Films & Encore Films
Rating: PG
Official Website: http://www.encorefilms.com/killers
Opening Day: 3 June 2010
Synopsis:
From Robert Luketic, the director of The Ugly Truth, KILLERS stars Ashton Kutcher and Katherine Heigl as newlyweds set to begin a life of wedded bliss. There’s only one problem, Kutcher’s character is an international assassin whose career is catching up with his marriage.
Heigl plays Jen Kornfeldt, fresh from a break-up. Jen is convinced she will never find love again like she had. When her parents offer to have her come with them to the French Riviera, she decides to go, thinking the vacation will not add up to much except “quality time with the parents.” It is there, under the romantic sunshine of France, that Heigl's Jen meets Ashton Kutcher's Spencer Aimes. Fast forward three years and Spencer and Jen are newlyweds living her dream life. Then, on the morning after his wild and crazy 30th birthday party, Spencer's past catches up with the couple. Spencer failed to mention to Jen when they met that his character is an international spy with a very specific title: Hit man.
Spencer and Jen’s problems in Killers certainly make the average marital woes seem pale in comparison. Get ready for a truely action-packed romantic comedy! Alongside Heigl and Kutcher, Killers stars two of our favorite veteran performers, Tom Selleck and Catherine O’Hara.
Movie Review:
There almost seems an implicit agreement that nobody involved in the "Killers" expected much from it at all – not the producers, not the actors and certainly not its audience. Its mediocrity is almost insistent, and just about contingent on its choice of leads: the consistently insipid Ashton Kutcher headlines together with the unrelentingly vapid Katherine Heigl, who collaborates with her "Ugly Truth" director Robert Luketic. If that wasn't a hazardous enough cinematic portent, then I don't know what is. Perhaps the next Uwe Boll video-game translation, but even that provides the twisted sense of perversion that comes from observing the remains of a train wreck. The "Killers" on the other hand, is as bland and unimaginatively dull as they come.
The premise is ripe for farce and incisive suburban satire but it never reaches above vulgar slapstick involving flatulence and punchlines on anatomy. Kutcher plays Spencer, the out-of-the-game hit-man for the CIA trying to live a blissful marital life with ditzy wife Jen (Heigl) who he met in the French Riviera while she was vacationing, up until a 20 million dollar bounty is put on his head during his 30th birthday, complicating matters for the newly-weds. It's a logline as insubstantial as one of Ashton's tweets or as unintelligible as one of Heigl's rants.
Kutcher, expectantly, does not pull off his role as a hardened assassin with his clearly limited skill-set. With all the screen presence of a pavement, he huffs and puffs his lines with not nearly as much bluster as the unflinchingly infantile script demands of his character. And Heigl continues to plough her own reputation in with yet another role that has no idea how to portray a contemporary female character – if this is the outlook in film choices for her post- "Grey's Anatomy" career, then all the best to her rising below sub-standard. Luketic has failed to make a female star appealing since Reese Witherspoon in "Legally Blonde" and it does not look like the streak's gonna stop with Heigl.
The bright spots in the film are few and far between. If a point was to be made about the importance of casting in unambitious studio-driven films like this, then the sturdily reliable Tom Selleck and comedy veteran, Catherine O'Hara will easily make it. The sheer ease of their chemistry is undeniable as parents of Heigl's dopey Jen. These are charismatic, entertaining personalities on screen together but they are unfortunately relegated to a supporting role for most of the proceedings which involves inane chatter about relationships over gunfire and rote car chases. It's hard to describe anything more mind-numbing than an exercise in banality.
While there will be a particular subset of audience that prods their friends to watch the film, or rebuke the ones with the natural (and correct) instincts to shy away from D-grade product such as this by remarking that the "Killers" is the sort of film that's pure leave-brains-by-the-door fluff that shouldn't be taken seriously. To this all I can say is that, is that really the extent of your time and worth?
Movie Rating:
 
(Kutcher and Heigl are cinematic blackholes)
Review by Justin Deimen
|
