TN FILM FOCUS: ‘KILLER ELITE’ – Starring Robert De Niro!


 

Jason Statham, Clive Owen and Robert De Niro star in ‘KILLER ELITE‘, released here on 23rd September, 2011!

 

Statham plays an ex-SAS agent who, after the abduction of his fellow agent (De Niro) sets off on a globetrotting rescue mission. De Niro’s character is, after all, like a father to him.
 


 

So who’s the bad guy in all this? Well, as you’d probably guessed by now it is Spike (Owen), the leader of a secret military organisation, himself an ‘Elite Killer’, who, despite his obvious pedigree sets three hitmen on Statham. Essentially this sounds like a computer game, the hitmen representing the level bosses, with Owen being the end of game boss, and De Niro the somewhat wrinkly version of Princess Peach.
 


 

The film is based on The Feather Men, a novel by explorer/novelist Ranulph Fiennes, and the book was controversially claimed by it’s author to be based on a true story about secret military group called ‘The Clinic’ who assassinated SAS members.

Fiennes himself claimed to have been a target of ‘The Clinic,’ with only the vigilante ‘Feather Men’ stopping their dastardly plan. I’m always dubious of films that use the term ‘based on a true story’, for, as we all know, the depth of that basis can be very shallow. As for Fiennes himself, he has apparently be very vague about story specifics, and this reminds me somewhat of his book The Sett – which, while I enjoyed immensely, relied on the reader to rely on the word of a source Fiennes met, with very little to back up his increasingly outlandish claims.

 

From the trailer it’s clear this won’t be an Oscar contender, but it does look like a fun and violent, if clichéd, thriller. Statham is now the go-to man for this sort of film Stateside, Owen can do the action schtick (for example see Bourne, to which this film seems to have quite a lot in common), and De Niro is… De Niro, even if his film choices haven’t been particularly inspired of late.

At the helm is Irish advert director Gary McKendry, who I know little about, but can obviously film an explosion, and a fight scene involving an incredibly acrobatic chair tethered Statham.

 

So are you excited to see these three heavyweights together on screen? Or will this have more clichés than pic has explosions?

 

http://www.killerelite.com/

 


 


 

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