The Killer’s Game (2024)

The-Killer's-Game-(2024)
The Killer’s Game (2024)

Quite a few wrestlers in the history of wrestling have tried out for a role in movies and shows, and from all of them, I think my favorite would have to be Dave Bautista who has been an interesting screen personality in the last few years. He is quite terrifying and has the build to get away with pure action roles but there is much more than that, he has managed to perform rather well in comedy too such as in “Guardians of the Galaxy” and “Glass Onion”, and even when he has just been asked to do chilling and dramatic scenes as a cameo in “Blade Runner 2049” he has pulled it off with a calm sense that reminds of the late and great actor Robert Forster. Even if he is stuck with trash films like the “My Spy” series, his presence keeps you glued to the screen. Bautista is as entertaining as ever in the awful starring role action-comedy “Killer’s Game,” and it is a mystery how he manages to carry such a dull film for 100 minutes, especially where the action is the selling point.

He plays the role of Zvi Flood, a skilled assassin living in Budapest. Don’t worry, for he is the most honorable one to hit the screen in many a moon he is a man with principles and he will only accept contracts to kill those who truly deserve it. His mentor and handler Zvi is played by the same man who once played Gandhi, the one and only Ben Kingsley. At the beginning of the film, we see a dance recital and it is obvious that such a blessed guy as our hero manages to meet Maize (Sofia Boutella), the lead dancer, and not only that, it leads to a romantic development. Sofia reminds him of the beauty of life, something that this hitman comedy desperately attempts to portray.

Unfortunately, there is another side to the story. Throughout the movie, Joe also explains how he suffers from excruciating migraines and a terminal illness, a neurodegenerative one, and sadly his doctor gives him only a maximum of three months to live.

Mikhail did not want Maize’s attentive eyes to witness him in pain, so he thought of suicide. But when Zvi does not want to take this sort of business on, he tries to find a killer through another handler, Marianna (Pom Klementieff). Since Marianna’s father is one of Joe’s many victims, she has no problems bringing people in to get the job done. Sadly, the very instant the contract is activated-Spoiler alert!-the phone rings and it’s Joe’s doctor telling him that there has been a mix-up at the lab and he is in fact fit. When Joe wants to cancel the contract, Marianna not only does not agree but brings in a complete host of killers and mercenaries.

The idea that someone contracts a hit on someone else, changes their mind, but is unable to rescind the contract, is an idea that has been used in multiple films in the past The Odd Job (1978) was written and directed by Graham Chapman and featured the concept, and it was prominently presented in the screenplay of Warren Beatty’s acclaimed Bulworth. What a unique premise. But screenwriters Rand Ravich and James Coyne who are developing it alongside a Jay R. Bonnansinga novel have run out of any sort of unique perspective on the material to make it stand out. The first half introduces the premise, with Joe being chased by various gangs composed of strange contract killers including a lesbian stripper double act, a Scottish sibling duo that speaks in so many unintelligible accents one is forced to read subtitles, and a K-pop group that is far more talented at assassination than at singing and dance with the second half being action sequences showing a variety of ways to kill these gangs. Each death manages to surpass the last in creativity and brutality, which will ensure audiences depart cinemas feeling as if they’ve watched a split film ‘Johnny Wick’ in comparison, much more philosophical.

There are films that have the winning combination of battles that are indeed kinetic visually, but unfortunately, here the visuals are delivered by J.J. Perry (Famous for the Jamie Foxx vampire hunter film ‘Day Shift’) in the most tired, standard, and obnoxious fashion possible, only to be exacerbated by the horrendous usage of CGI as if we are somehow trying to undersell the bloodshed in this film.

Under these mostly miserable conditions, Bautista applies himself to the best of his abilities with the hand (and other body parts that abound) on show. The degree to which the film does work does so nearly exclusively because of Bautista’s endeavors. In my opinion, even if he must have realized that there was probably nowhere to go but backward doing something like this, especially after being part of more robust types of productions such as numerous MCU releases, the two epic Dune movies, Knock At The Cabin, his resolve must have been to give the effort his all which in this case makes it more bearable than it would have been in the hands of others. In terms of the other cast members though, some of them are quite strong personalities (Terry Crews included as one of the contract killers) but they are mostly underused – an action girl in the form of the hot head Boutella looks dazed as in ‘worried girlfriend’ role, Kingsley is going through the motions clearly, fans expecting fireworks from Bautista and his ex-MCU co-star Klementieff have been warned that they only inhabit the same frame for a few minutes at the most.

A tedious and derivative entertainment awful nonetheless since it is It’s shocking that “The Killer’s Game” will even see a theatrical release, as it would be much better off reaching a streaming platform and disappearing into the depths of the algorithm without a trace. Sadly, this is not the case since Bautista clearly deserves better than what he has provided at this rather early phase of his screen career. One can only hope that by the time Bautista has fully emerged as a star of substance, everyone has moved on and forgotten about the film as a whole. In fact, most people will likely forget that the film ever existed before the end of the month.

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