Review of Killers (2010) by Chads — 06 Jun 2010

Ashton Kutcher plays a killer, but not the "Psycho Killer" that's promised in the trailer. Unwilling to put his screen image at risk, Kutcher doesn't kill with a gun, or knife, or even with his bare hands.

The ex-"That 70s Show" star leaves the nail guns and chainsaws for Christian Bale to handle. Spencer is a nice psycho. The nicest psycho in Nice. The contract killer merely pushes a button, causing the helicopter he rigged with explosives to blow up.

No arterial spray, not even a drop of the red stuff is spilled. Blood would remind the moviegoer that the American girl on vacation(played by Katherine Heigl) just had lunch with a sociopath. Modeled loosely after 007, the former star of "Grey's Anatomy"(and future Shelley Long), ends up looking like a Bond girl of a lesser god.

Presuming that she's not a superlative lip reader, daddy's girl(daddy is played by Tom Selleck) should have heard the midair detonation of the chopper. Perhaps it's bad editing, the moviegoer thinks, since there's no reaction shot(on her, or anybody's part) to the earsplitting blast.

"Killers" just proceeds on to the next scene. The editor, not the screenwriter, helps keep the secret of Spencer's nefarious trade from the unsuspecting tourist. For sure, bad editing confuses the moviegoer, back on American soil at the now-married couple's suburban home, where a near-death experience in their garage becomes a mystery, because it's unclear as to who's doing the shooting: the man in the kitchen(a knife-wielding man), or the woman at the front door(a woman, as it turns out, was the only neighbor not trying to kill the Aimes unit).

So where does the itchy trigger finger come from? Personally speaking, the bullet-riddled attempt on Spencer's life is practically extra-diegetic, a transmogrifying assailment from the moviegoer who wants a simple shot/reverse shot for the sake of clarity.

If my aim was true, the chemistry-free pair(Kutcher and Heigl are no Chris Franz and Tina Weymouth) would be stopped, dead in their tracks, from riffing on Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill: Vol.

2", in which a delicate domestic matter starts to encroach on the protagonist's wild, wild life. "Killers" has an edge all right, a dull one. "Killers" is no "Grosse Point Blank".

John Cusack played a character that had the conviction of a cold-blooded killer. It's a trait that Spencer needs to make his transformation into a pillar of the community mean something.