Sunday 4 July 2010

KILLERS

CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS

We do not live in interesting times, at least as far as cinema is concerned. How on Earth has this managed to take nearly £2,000,000 at the UK box-office when it's so hollow and plastic? Hit it with a stick and it'll echo for an hour. It's not got anything we haven't seen before, and isn't even done as well as those times when we did see it before.

The basic idea of Killers is that Ashton Kutcher is a hitman, on the South of France when he encounters recently dumped Katharine Heigl and her irritating parents. He's wanting to quit the assassination game and settle down into anonymous normality; they fall in love and get married, and everything in their horribly plastic suburban life is oging perfectly well until his old boss gets in touch - and then friends and neighbours start trying to kill them, and there's a load of fighting and chasing until a ridiculous explanation at the end as to who's behind it all and why.

So it's a bit like True Lies (because she thinks he's a corporate consultant type) and a bit like Mr And Mrs Smith. But because they've gone for a 12A rating, the action and violence is pretty muted and the movie has to fall back on the comedy. Tom Selleck knows what he's doing but I'm not convinced about Ashton Kutcher. He does spend a lot of the time with his shirt off pointing his six-pack and chest at the camera. He's also one of the producers and was probably responsible for the inclusion of dialogue about his "physical godlike perfection". A pity, because he, or at least his character, is as bland and empty as the movie is. It all passes a couple of hours with a couple of very mild laughs and that's really not enough.

**

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