Aaron Mate, action, Alex Kingston, Ben Kingsley, Cheol-woo Lee, Dave Bautista, Gergo Hodur, Hyunjeong Han, Ivan Orsanyi, J.J. Perry, Jeongyeon So, Lee Hoon, Marko Zaror, Mia Rouba M. Kiss, movies, Pom Klementieff, Raffaello Degruttola, reviews, Scott Adkins, Seonggu Cho, Shaina West, Sofia Boutella, Terry Crews, The Killer's Game
September 26, 2024
by Carla Hay
Directed by J.J. Perry
Some language in French and Hungarian with subtitles
Culture Representation: Taking place in various European countries, the action film “The Killer’s Game” (based on the 1997 book of the same name) features a racially diverse group of people (white, black, Asian, Latin) who are assassins or middle-class, working-class and wealthy people.
Culture Clash: After being diagnosed with a terminal illness, a longtime assassin puts a hit out on his life so his girlfriend can collect life insurance money, but when he finds out the diagnosis was a mistake, he tries to stop his own assassination.
Culture Audience: “The Killer’s Game” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners, the book on which the move was based, and mindless action flicks.
Outdated, crass and moronic, “The Killer’s Game” is overstuffed with hollow characters, stupid dialogue and terrible performances. This annoying action flick (about an assassin who tries to stop his own assassination) is a flop in every way. It’s not even the type of idiotic and predictable action flick where at least the acting and fight scenes are entertaining to watch. It’s just a constant display of loudness, crudely choreographed violence and a poorly conceived plot that gets worse as it goes along.
Directed by J.J. Perry, “The Killer’s Game” was written by Rand Ravich and James Coyne, who adapted the screenplay from Jay Bonansinga’s 1997 novel of the same name. Everything about “The Killer’s Game” looks like a throwaway film that could’ve been made in the 1990s, from the parade of mostly C-list action stars to the overtly sexist “male gaze” camera shots where there are many close-ups of scantily clad women’s rear ends, but the men in the movie never have to wear skimpy outfits that barely cover their private parts.
“The Killer’s Game” (which takes place in various European countries and was actually filmed in Hungary) begins by showing protagonist Joseph “Joseph” Flood in Budapest, Hungary at a Bolshoi Ballet gala performance. Joe is an American assassin who is undercover at this event as a tuxedo-clad attendee, so he looks like he will blend in with this audience. Joe’s target is Vasily Petrov (Dmitrij Kalacsov), a corrupt official who is a secret crime lord.
This movie is so ridiculous, Joe doesn’t even attempt to do anything to disguise his face in a place that surely has security cameras. Before Joe moves in on his target, he’s on a communication device talking to his mentor/boss Zvi Rabinowitz (played by Ben Kingsley), who tells Joe that he has to do the job but “with no blood,” even though the only weapons Joe has brought are a knife and a gun. Zvi, who is supposed to be a philosophical type of adviser, has some of the worst and corniest lines in the movie
Joe immediately kills three of Vasily’s bodyguards (played by Iván Orsányi, Aaron Maté and Gergö Hódur—one by throat slashing, the other two by shooting—so that Joe can get to Vasily, who is sitting in a balcony with a date (played by Mia Rouba M. Kiss) while watching the ballet performance. Joe shoots Vasily in the head and lets Vasily’s date (an innocent bystander) run away. More of Vasily’s goons show up to try and kill Joe by shooting, but he escapes.
The audience has heard the gunshots, and witnesses saw Vasily getting murdered, so the performance is cut short, chaos ensues, and people run out into the streets. One of the people running out of the building is Maize Arnaud (played by Sofia Boutella), the performance’s principal dancer. Joe “rescues” Maize (pronounced “may-zee”), who asks him what his name is. He tells her his name is Joe, but he quickly leaves the crime scene when she briefly takes her eyes off of him.
Joe has been experiencing ringing in his head and blurry vision. On the night of this assassination, he has another one of these episodes. The next day, Joe finds Maize at a dance class that she is teaching. It isn’t made clear where Maize is originally from, but her native language is French, a principal language spoken in France, Belgium and other countries. Just like Joe, Maize is living on her own and isn’t close to any family members.
At first Joe throws away Maize’s phone number. But then, he changes his mind and asks her out to dinner. During this dinner conversation, Joe tells the truth about himself except for what he does for a living. He says he’s in “retirement planning” job. In reality, he’s an assassin who’s planning to retire. Joe also mentions that when he was 18, he left home to join the U.S. Army and hardly anyone in his home noticed that he was gone.
The relationship between Joe and Maize quickly blossoms as they continue to date each other and fall in love. The movie shows a montage of Joe and Maize on romantic dates, intercut with scenes of Joe globetrotting in various European countries (such as France, Romania, Austria, and Switzerland) to viciously murder people he was hired to kill. During this entire time, Joe keeps his assassin job a secret from Maize.
Joe tells Zvi and Zvi’s vulgar wife Sharon Rabinowitz (played by Alex Kingston) that he’s fallen in love with Maize and wants to retire from being an assassin so that he can settle down with Maize. Sharon process to give Joe unsolicited sex advice. Zvi advises Joe to tell Maize as soon as possible about being an assassin. Zvi says that he told Sharon the truth about his assassin activities early on in their relationship, which Zvi says is one of the reasons why their relationship has lasted as long.
After Joe gets some medical tests done, Joe’s physician Dr. Kagen (played by Raffaello Degruttola) tells him bad news: Joe has Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a fatal neurodegenerative illness, and Joe has about three months to live. Joe then decides he’s going to get a life insurance policy for himself and make Maize the sole beneficiary. And in order for Maize to collect the life insurance policy (which would not pay her if Joe dies of natural causes or suicide), Joe secretly orders an assassination of himself.
Joe tells Zvi about this plan and asks Zvi to find someone to murder Joe, but Zvi refuses. Zvi tries and fals to get Joe to change his mind. Joe tells Zvi: “I lived by the sword. I want to die the same way.” Joe then goes to an assassination broker named Marianna Antoinette (played by Pom Klementieff) and offers her $2 million to find someone to kill him. Marianna is very eager to take this assignment because Joe killed Marianna’s father years ago because her father was an assassin who “transgressed.” Apparently, even among these murderers, there’s a code of “ethics” to follow.
What ensues is an incoherent slog of various assassins being hired by Marianna to kill Joe. She increases the payout to $4 million after Joe tries to call off the assassination when he finds out that he was misdiagnosed (due to a mixup of another patient’s medical records), and he doesn’t have Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease after all. None of this is spoiler information because the trailers for “The Killer’s Game” reveal about 90% of the movie’s plot. Marianna has a right-hand man named Max (played by Daniel Bernhardt), a war criminal who does the dirty work of overseeing some of these would-be killers who want this bounty.
You know the rest: over-the-top and unrealistic fights, bloody violence, explosions, car chases. Most of the assassins do not have real personalities and are not much different from disposable video game characters. Somewhat of an exception is an assassin playboy named Creighton Lovedahl (played by Terry Crews), the killer who gets more screen time than the other assassins who are out to get Joe. However, Creighton is nothing but a stereotype who says and does all the usual lunkhead things that you would expect in a horrible movie like “The Killer’s Game.”
Other assassins who clutter up the screen are a South Korean gang leader named Goyang (played by Lee Hoon), who brings four gang members (played by Jeongyeon So, Hyunjeong Han, Seonggu Cho and Cheol-woo Lee) with him to ambush Joe. There are also two buffoons named the Wango Brothers, who are so inconsequential to the story, they don’t last long and they’re not even listed in the film’s end credits. Scottish brothers Angus Mackenzie (played by Scott Adkins) and Rory Mackenzie (played by Drew McIntyre) are another bumbling duo.
Two assassins from England who call themselves the Party Girls work as strippers and are in the movie only so they show their stripper moves then inflict some sadistic violence while in their barely-there stripper clothes. Their names are Ginni (played by Lucy Cork) and Toyna (played by Shaina West)—like gin and tonic—and the movie hints that they’re drug of choice is cocaine. Emilio “El Botas” Gasevich (played by Marko Zaror) is a dancing assassin. Seriously.
But perhaps the most irritating character in movie filled with irritating characters is a wannabe assassin named Money (played by George Somner), who a talkative dork who looks like he’s seen too episodes of Sacha Baron Cohen’s “Da Ali G Show,” because he seems like he’s a parody of the worst things about the Ali G character. Because Money is Marianna’s cousin, Money gets to tag along with Creighton, who hates having to train this incompetent loser.
All of the acting in “The Killer’s Game” is mediocre or bad, even from Oscar-winning Kingsley, who deserves better than to be in this type of garbage move. Bautista and Boutella (playing a generic girlfriend) are never convincing as a couple who are supposed to be passionately in love with each other. Klementieff is especially stiff with her acting in this movie, which is a disappointment considering the great chemistry that she and Bautista had when they co-starred in the “Guardians of the Galaxy” movies together. In “The Killer’s Game,” that chemistry doesn’t exist. And neither does anything resembling a good movie.
Lionsgate released “The Killer’s Game” in U.S. cinemas on September 13, 2024.