Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Movie Review: Killers (2010)

This 2010 action romantic comedy is directed by Robert Luketic (of Legally Blond, Monster-in-Law, 21, and The Ugly Truth fame)- so yeah all winners- and is the story of Jen Kornfeldt (Katherine Heigl) recently left by her boyfriend for being overly cautious. On a trip to Nice, France with her parents she meets an enigmatic and sexy (god I can't believe I'm writing this) young man named Spencer (Ashton Kutcher), a CIA agent with a license to kill. The pair begin a whirlwind romance which quickly leads to marriage. However when old enemies begin looking for Spencer, Jen has two choices, leave Spencer, or save his life.

I'm a sucker for these kinds of movies- action comedies with a sexy cast and hints of romance. The only problem is, these types of moves tend to be pretty awful. Okay I'm lying. They tend to be godawful. I may be one of only a handful of people who thought the trailers looked fantastic and wanted to see it. Judging by the movies poor box office performance, maybe there were less than a handful of us. To my brothers and sisters in arms I say this, "Guess what? Everyone else was right and we were way off." This film doesn't even deserve my traditional format for movie reviews.

Nothing works in this film and I'm stunned that director Robert Luketic keeps getting work. His movies have been progressively getting worse and I never thought he could reach the lows of J-lo's Monster-in-Law, but this film makes that one look like Casablanca. He must have some dirt on some film execs because there is no good reason why he should ever be allowed to direct another movie.

To be fair some of the shots in this film were quite beautiful. But the action scenes, the scenes the whole movie is based around were bland and at times incomprehensible. However, I thought the cast was quite good. Heigl is just beautiful even if she can't act particularly well, and Kutcher is actually a pretty good actor. I can see him playing like a younger James Bond type, a kind who gets all the girls, travels the world killing, and yet also appears vulnerable. Film producers, get to making that script happen.

So yeah, sure the cast is hot, the locales beautiful, but there really isn't anything here besides a mind-numbingly ridiculous plot, some shaky directing, a worse script and some truly terrible dialogue. I give this film a definite, "sneak out/I want my money back rating." Like how in basketball, when players getting blow-out score, it's called "garbage time." Killers is the equivalent of that. This is just "garbage time", something to fill the time just because it needs to be done and sadly, someone has to do it?


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