The worst thing a movie can be is forgettable. Considering I saw The Killer’s Game Monday night and just now remembered it opened today says it all. Admittedly, I was anticipating this film after seeing the trailer — I even made it my Coming Attraction on one of our podcast episodes. Apparently whoever cut together the trailer had way more fun than Simon Smith did with the actual movie.
Director J.J. Perry—another stuntman making his directorial debut à la Chad Stahelski and David Leitch—bogs everything down with a pace that’s way too slow for a film that should be fun. What could have been his John Wick or Atomic Blonde winds up being exactly just like every other Lionsgate action movie that somehow made it to the big screen. It’s instantly forgettable walking out of the theater.
Joe Flood (Dave Bautista) is a top assassin in his deadly world of ruthless killers. After a hit goes awry in Budapest, Joe winds up in a meet cute after saving Maize (Sofia Boutella) from being trampled. The botched hit was due to a migraine attack, sending him to the doctor to find out what’s wrong, in spite of his handler, Zvi (Ben Kingsley), insisting doctor’s don’t know anything. His doctor diagnoses Joe with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and is on his way out. Just what he didn’t need after striking up a whirlwind romance with Maize. This doesn’t stop him from putting a hit on himself, come to find out the prognosis was wrong, and now it’s too late to call off the hit.
If this sounds very run of the mill, perhaps it’s because, in spite of being based on a novel by Jay Bonansinga, The Killer’s Game has been in production hell since at least 1995. Never able to find a director, and not even able to entice Wesley Snipes to stay signed on in the lead, bouncing through numerous studios, directors, and writers, until finally snagging Bautista in 2019. Production then never actually started until May 2023, when Ice Cube was set to co-star, only to be replaced by Terry Crews. There are also nine offscreen additional literary material credits. Needless to say, The Killer’s Game probably just simply never needed to be made.
Bautista does what he can with the material, playing the character far more solemn than he should. You never believe he wants to live, or die, when both are needed in order for the character to work. Casting Boutella was a great choice, she seems to be the only one having any fun, and considering she’s a dancer in real life, she makes sense.
The rest of the cast are completely disposable with some of the worst supporting characters in this kind of film in a long time. Packed with over-the-top CGI gore, pedestrian-staged action scenes and fight sequences, and a pace that will have you checking your own pulse as it plods to the finish line, The Killer’s Game is best left for whatever streaming service it finds itself, where it might find an audience. As for picking this weekend, it was probably a bad omen to open it on Friday the 13th, because it’s going to get killed.
