classicsoncall Review of Killer Elite

Killer Elite (2011)

"Killing's easy. Living with it is the hard part."

[7/10 · 5 November 2018]

Pretty standard action thriller with a globe trotting formula that's a feature of a lot of them these days. Jason Statham is stoic as a hired assassin who would like to quit the business but is sucked back in when his former mentor Hunter (Robert De Niro) is held for ransom by a dying Sheikh (Rodney Afif). The Sheikh is highly motivated to get revenge on the men who killed his three older sons, but it would have been a good idea for him to find out his youngest (Firass Dirani) didn't give a tinker's damn about going back to the desert to live with the camels. The interesting aspect to the picture has two of the world's premier assassins, Danny (Statham) and Spike Logan (Clive Owen) in each other's cross hairs merely for being on opposite sides of the story. I thought by the end of the film they would have mended fences for trying to kill each other, it almost looked like it at one point but Danny's moral superiority got in the way. For De Niro, this was one of his easier paychecks because he wasn't in the middle of most of the action. He bookended the story with a less physical role, which you can forgive because the guy was about sixty eight when he made the picture. Left unresolved at the finale was why Danny refused his share of the Sheikh's money for accepting his assignment. If he gets over his bruised ego, maybe Spike will deliver the share at a later date.