NEW YORK (OSV News) – “The Killer’s Game” (Lionsgate) is a potentially entertaining, albeit ridiculous, action comedy. Unfortunately, the criminal mayhem the movie lightheartedly showcases involves stomach-churning images of gore and dismemberment that quickly cancel out any fun that might be had from it.
Having found true love with Maize (Sofia Boutella), a French ballerina living in Hungary, Budapest-based American hitman Joe Flood (Dave Bautista) prepares to retire from his murderous profession. But his peaceable plans are upended when he’s diagnosed with a fatal degenerative disease.
Unwilling to burden Maize, Joe engineers a break-up. He also decides to cheat the illness by putting out a contract on himself.
Since Joe’s longtime handler, Zvi (Ben Kingsley), who’s also an old friend, refuses to have anything to do with the scheme, he turns instead to Marianna (Pom Klementieff), a bitter enemy whose father Joe killed. She soon has a crowd of expert assassins on his trail. Only then does Joe belatedly discover that he’s been misdiagnosed.
Those out to get Joe come from all parts of the globe and each has a quirky approach to dispatching his or her victims. The most developed character among them is African American gun-for-hire Lovedahl (Terry Crews) whose tough, no-nonsense persona strongly recalls Jules Winnfield, Samuel L. Jackson’s character in Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction.”
A third-act encounter with a priest is as silly as the rest of the plot, though overall he’s presented as a sympathetic figure. Yet, by the time the clergyman appears, most of the criminals attacking Joe have already been dispatched with such gruesome explicitness that director J.J. Perry’s screen version of Jay R. Bonansinga’s novel has gone irredeemably off the rails.
This surfeit of slaughter renders it unnecessary to call Rand Ravich and James Coyne’s script out for attempting to make Joe’s activities seem more acceptable by assuring the audience that he only agrees to target bad people. Any issues of do-it-yourself justice — or suicide, for that matter — get pushed aside by a succession of meat-grinder visuals.
The film contains excessive bloody violence, numerous grisly sights, pre-marital bedroom scenes, rear nudity, an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, brief but coarse sexual humor, mildly irreverent comedy, at least one use of profanity, about a half-dozen milder oaths, pervasive rough language and frequent crude and crass expressions. The OSV News classification is O — morally offensive. The Motion Picture Association rating is R — restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.
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