Review of Killshot (2008) by Brandon S — 11 Jan 2010

What happens when you see a mob killer, a man that no one gets to see and live? Well, in Killshot, you go to leave your northern home for the witness protection program in Cape Girardeau, Missouri...but for reasons that are never exactly made clear, you don't stay there. Instead, you go back home, where the unseeable man is waiting for you, and in a pretty unrealistic set of circumstances, you defeat him and live happily ever after. Except for the happily part, as your falling-apart marriage never actually gets put back together.

There's a lot more to Killshot than that. And many parts that are a lot better and much less simplistic and/or farfetched. Mickey Rourke shows, as in the Wrestler, why he was able to come back as a serious and respected actor--his "unseeable man" role is pure competence, ruthless and deadly but principled and, oddly, occasionally compassionate. It's as if he knows exactly how much death is right for him to dole out, and anything more he views as wasteful. That the character is Native American lends credence to that idea, as well as depth to the character and props to Rourke's acting. Joseph Gordon-Levitt once again shows his immense versatility as a callous and overly energetic sociopath who looks up to Rourke's hitman but ultimately just wants to kill everyone he can. Diane Lane and Thomas Jane are solid in the ostensible lead roles, though not particularly special--their chemistry does exist, but their characters' unresolved divorce and new identities pulls that chemistry in several directions at once. Rosario Dawson is heart-wrenching as Gordon-Levitt's hopeful but doomed girlfriend.

But even all these good and great character portrayals are only enough to make Killshot a pretty good flick. A tighter plot, better reasons for characters' actions, sharper dialogue and more plausibility would have kicked it up towards being great.