Though it often veers away from its most appealing elements, The Killer's Game delivers enough of the action comedy goods for a once over.
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One of the ongoing movie discussions online has been, "Who is the best wrestler turned actor?" The most successful is obviously Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, in terms of sheer box office numbers and career longevity. But a lot of folks are a bit sick of the his schtick, including Johnson himself, hence why he's pairing up with guys like the Safdie brothers and Martin Scorsese to make more substantial art. But the crown of "the best" is frequently given to Dave Bautista. Partially because he's been willing to play a bunch of different kinds of characters and also because he's been willing to play into and against his type. So while it's easy to imagine The Rock pulling off Bautista's near speechless Bond henchman in Spectre, it's harder to imagine the Rock pulling off Bautista's coiled performance in Knock at the Cabin. And this is all misdirection because this movie is just Bautista making a very basic action comedy that should be way better.
The Setup
Bautista stars as Joe Flood, a highly skilled assassin who's life gets turned upside down after meeting a gorgeous ballerina during a job. Hoping to put down roots, Flood and his lady love Malze begin a whirlwind romance that comes to screeching halt when Joe gets terrible news. He's got a terminal illness. Wanting to ensure Malze is set for life once he passes, Joe puts out a massive hit on himself...only to find out that the diagnosis was wrong and he's got an army of assassins coming his way.
A lot of the issues with The Killer's Game can be boiled down to the movie wanting to do something slightly different than expected. The usual version of this is that our hero is assassin. Girlfriend doesn't know about it. Someone then finds out who our assassin is and puts a hit out on them or the girlfriend. Assassin then has to kill everyone to keep girlfriend safe while also pushing through the realities of their profession in the heat of battle.
The shift on this gimmick is that Bautista's Joe, thinks he's dying and essentially outs himself by putting a contract on his own life while buying up a big life insurance policy. Which is an idea that falls apart as soon as you think about it for more than five seconds because being murdered after putting together a giant policy is the definition of a red flag.
Normally this is the dumb action movie logic I can throw away in favor of a bunch of over-the-top action beats, but it demonstrates the movie's difficulty in identifying its best ideas.
All the movie really needs is this army of assassins coming after Joe. And they have a built-in reason with Pom Klementieff's villain clearly having a grudge against Joe and a gaggle of assassins at her disposal. So we don't really need the "could be dying" angle at all. If anything this mostly exists to put Sofia Boutella's love interest at a distance from Joe. Which ends up not mattering because she gets roped in anyways. It's all convoluted in unnecessary ways to add a layer of emotional depth that doesn't match the rest of the movie.
Because this movie is at its absolute best when it's being an anarchic over-the-top comedy versus anything dramatic. For instance, in this movie Sir Ben Kingsley is playing Bautista's longtime mentor and handler. Pretty standard role for an older actor and doesn't need to be anything more than an exposition dump. But then the movie adds in Kingsley's highly-inappropriate wife Sharon who is a hilarious edition because she talks like your aunt drunk on a bottle of wine. That's the subversive stuff that works.
Likewise, the collection of assassins ranging from a group of South Korea punks with unconventional weapons, Terry Crews playing a perpetually pissed off professional working with an amateur, or Scott Adkins and Drew Galloway playing drunken Scottish fighters provide a lot of natural variety to the close-quarters combat and play their parts to the rafters.
The movie is at its best when an exhausted Bautista is trying to fend off wave after wave of these flamboyant killers or he calmly tries to explain his murder job to the civilians. Partially because this leans into Bautista's affinity for performing action and deadpan delivery, but also because they did accumulate a great collection of action movie talent for this movie that perform most of their own action.
The back third is where it really hits is stride as the action escalates and as anyone can predict, our love interest gets involved, and the movie more or less abandons its original premise for a more standard one.
The lesson with Killer's Game isn't that a gimmick is a bad idea. Probably how the movie got sold. But the gimmick should match the movie's tone.
The Verdict: Silly, But Watchable
Though it often veers away from its most appealing elements, The Killer's Game delivers enough of the action comedy goods for a once over. 5/10
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