Killers

Review by Sean Lynch

Hollywood loves an old fashioned "First In, Best Dressed" movie challenge. We've seen it before with Armageddon and Deep Impact, The Wild and Madagascar and now we have it with Date Night, Knight & Day and Killers.

It's pretty straight forward stuff - Assassins keeping secrets, and their partners who are kept in the dark and out of their depth. It's a nice little combo really - action, romance, comedy.

Essentially, an inter-genre "Fish out of Water" story.

Problem is, it's the sort of story that can only be told once before losing it's charm pretty quickly.

So how do you decide between three movies which are essentially sequels to Mr & Mrs Smith? And did anyone really ask for a sequel to that Brangelina two-hander in the first place?

Date Night opted to go for "the laughs" and failed miserably, Knight & Day went for action and got lost in the CGI - Killers on the other hand has gone for chemistry and in doing so, by gum, I think we have a winner.

Killers keeps it simple nice and early, kicking off on a plane with Jen Kornfeldt (Katherine Heigl) trying to recover from a sudden break-up by joining her parents (Tom Selleck and Catherine O'Hara) on a trip to the French Riviera.

Within hours of setting foot into her hotel, Jen crosses paths with the man of her (and every other woman in the audiences') dreams : the dashing, handsome, tanned and ab-tastic Spencer Aimes (Ashton Kutcher).

Things go well, and three years later, she and Spencer are newlyweds living the ideal suburban life. Problem is - Spencer is an (Ex) Assassin - and now there is a $20M bounty on his head. It seems someone from his past wants him dead... and soon.

Cue the gun fire, Heigl squealing about and holding a gun like it's a dead rat and some witty "mundane couples fights in the middle of an action sequence".

On the whole, Aussie Robert Luketic has put together a fun little pic here. It's fast paced, the laughs are plenty and the action is solid without ever being over-the-top.

It also helps that Ashton Kutcher is impossibly charming (finally casting off the "awkward dork / stoner" schtick that's ruined his previous rom-com's), Tom Selleck's moustache is as thick as ever (it really is a shame he never went onto become the star he deserves to be, Selleck is as cool as hell), Heigl's bod is rocking and - most importantly - Catherine O'Hara plays the best damn "drunken housewife" in Hollywood (it's her bread and butter role these days).

Look, Killers is a movie that sticks to a pretty solid formula (like any good Rom-Com should) and while that means it doesn't offer up any groundbreaking Inception-esque cinematic innovations, it also means that you won't leave the cinema unfulfilled.

It gives us exactly what it says it will, no more, no less - and that's exactly why Killers works so well.

3.5 out of 5

Killers
Australian release: 29th July, 2010
Official Site: Killers
Cast: Ashton Kutcher, Katherine Heigl, Thomas Selleck, Catherine O'Hara, Rob Riggle
Director: Robert Luketic