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There is possibly no other category that is more bloated, strained, and completely unsatisfying than the British gangster genre. These works are usually proudly marketed as British films only to further embellish stereotypes with out of depth characterizations, while lackluster scripts upon scripts are stacked to be disguised with glamourous display that aims to hide any issues along the process. One of the newest entries is Age of Kill (2015), a film which hopes to project a high IQ self image but, in the end, falls flat on its face. There’s hardly any merit in this barebones British thriller, perhaps even forcing us to wonder if creating an engaging British action film is still feasible.
The structure itself is fairly textbook. A former black ops sniper Sam Blake (Martin Kemp) is forced into a masked terrorists 6 hour murder spree after kidnaps his daughter (the gloriously-monickered Dani Dyer). Lexi (April Pearson) is another young woman, who under similar duress seems just as upset and daunted as Sam and is similarly subdued. All the while, the police press on in their manhunt for Blake, with D.I. Hannah Siddiq (Anouska Mond) saddled with moronic colleagues, as his murders gain notoriety.
If a single government official á la Nigel Farage were to be added to the mix to weave together these bizarre plots, by the time the last act rolls along, this intricate web is nothing short of a tangled catastrophe.
The film suffers tremendously in character development and overarching narrative resulted in pure lunacy and irrationality. The Age of Kill has a quality that makes it remarkably unique, and that is hook the audience in with questions rather than solving them.
This story strategy is thin to begin with unless executed well like in Taken (2008) and here it is provided so little in the way of pathos. Why should we care if Sam Blake’s daughter is murdered if we do not know enough about either of them? Moreover, why should we care to invest in any of these characters when we are left to ‘feed’ on these weak personality archetypes: old geezer gunmen, fanatical politicians, smart-but-undervalued women? This film is far too cliché to be awarded anything more than a glance of acceptance for its good looks. This low caliber actioner has too many problems and the emotional payoff comes too little too late. Age of Kill is ultimately yet another poorly directed film that will only frustrate viewers that are craving a good action movie.
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