Killer Elite

Year: 1975

Grade: F

Country: USA

Director: Peckinpah

Review

when i first heard the particulars of this film – peckinpah, caan, duvall, hopkins, kung-fu, the title – i was pretty excited. that faded quickly. killer elite isn’t, everything that wild bunch is. absolutely awful from the opening sequence to the finale. before the film, a peckinpah biographer commented that the first 20 minutes of the film are brilliant, but that things sort of fell apart after that. he was half right. the rest of the panel gave varying excuses for what, even they, must have known to be inferior – there were six different stunt coordinators working on the martial arts finale, the producer had too much influence, the producer’s wife played the female lead (a rather small part), etc. the truth is that the screenplay sucks and the execution didn’t even come close to saving it. fielding, who does the brilliant score for wild bunch, turns in his best rendition of a 70s made-for-tv action film. in other words, it’s awful. robert duvall mails it in with his usual routine. james caan, coming off the inspiring rollerball, turns in a lackluster performance. bo hopkins, as nice and funny as he is in person, is the definition of amateur in this film.

in killer elite we see peckinpah relying on tried techniques. a cross-editing technique (e.g. cross-cutting between someone falling in slow motion and something else happening at the same time) which is so well-executed in wild bunch, falls flat here. storytelling and character development are non-existent, two-dimensional or cliché. one producer, silliphant, was behind the bet that produced manos: hands of fate. perhaps we can blame the entire thing on him. oh god i don’t even want to write about this movie anymore.

Watched in theater