Bullet Points: The Killer’s Game
2024 has been a great year for action movies and they just keep coming. The Killer’s Game hits theaters this weekend and of all the action movies on the 2024 slate, this is the one I had been anticipating the most.
Directed by action movie veteran, J.J. Perry, starring Dave Bautista and featuring a cast of some of the best of the best in the world of action entertainment… this one felt like a can’t miss!
- It Ain’t Ballet: We witness Europe’s greatest assassin, Joe Flood (Dave Bautista, Knock at the Cabin), as he takes out his latest target at the ballet. It’s a relatively clean job with no issues, but that soon changes. We find out that Joe has been experiencing severe headaches that are causing him to have double vision and when the security team that was supposed to be protecting the guy that Joe killed find their boss dead all hell breaks loose! Joe ends up saving the star ballerina, Maize (Sofia Boutella, Rebel Moon: Part One) and the romantic seeds are planted… Joe falls in love and there’s a great sequence that perfectly cuts between Joe’s work and his romance… As the relationship with Maize gets more serious, Joe begins discussing an exit strategy with his friend and handler, Zvi Rabinowitz (Ben Kingsley, Security)… Then Joe finds out the cause of his headaches and gets a grim diagnosis, he has Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (or CJD for those in the know). With a max of three months to live, Joe has Zvi draft up a fake life insurance policy so he can leave everything to Maize, then he puts out a contract out on himself… and since Zvi won’t accept it, Joe has to turn to a woman with a very personal grudge against him.
- Here We Go: The Killer’s Game gives the colorful cast of assassins their own unique introductions. Which I thought was a nice touch. There were quite a few familiar faces in the bunch too… Terry Crews plays ladies man, Lovedahl… Marko Zaror plays the music loving, El Botas… And then there’s the Mackenzie Brothers, Angus (Scott Adkins, One More Shot) and Rory (Drew Galloway aka Drew McIntyre of WWE fame)… A funny thing happens seconds before the contract on Joe’s life is set to begin. Joe gets a call from his doctor, it turns out the lab made a mistake, Joe doesn’t have CJD and he isn’t going to die anytime soon… well at least not from the CJD. The ball is rolling, and when Joe tries to cancel the contract… that request is denied.
- Kill or Be Killed: At this point the movie goes into action overdrive Joe being hunted down by his fellow assassins and even some professional mercenaries led by Radovan (Daniel Bernhardt, Nobody). The stakes are raised when Maize finds herself pulled into the danger and she finds out what the man she loves really is all about, the one thing that Joe was hoping to avoid.
It has been said… “Don’t hate the player, hate the game” (in fact it was said in this movie!), but if you are an action fanatic looking for a good time, I don’t think it is possible to hate The Killer’s Game. It is like a graphic novel come to life… with an emphasis on GRAPHIC. The kills are over the top, unforgiving and downright disemboweling at times, but the movie also has a keen sense of humor.
There is not a weak link to be found in the cast… everyone does their part and J.J. Perry does a masterful job of putting it all together.
I will do my best to masterfully present to you some Bonus Bullet Points…
- Tradition: One of the big selling points of the movie for me was Drew Galloway’s involvement. Drew has been having the best run of his career in the WWE this year and I have to imagine that making his feature film debut is the icing on the cake. Professional wrestlers making the jump to action movies is a longstanding tradition and Drew’s involvement felt a lot like Jesse Ventura’s debut in Predator and I couldn’t help but think of the infamous dookie scene in No Holds Barred too.
- Bastard Count: I counted a total of five “bastards” uttered in The Killer’s Game.
- Soundtraxx: The Killer’s Game has quite an interesting mix of music including Dolly Parton’s cover of “Shine”, the classic “Shotgun” by Junior Walker & The All Stars, “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me” by Culture Club and James Brown’s “The Payback”.
