Killers - Blu-ray Review

'Kutcher apparently still holds the belief that speaking in a slightly deeper voice is the same thing as showing dramatic range'

At one point during Killers, Spencer (Ashton Kutcher) actually says the line 'I work for blah blah blah and I have a licence to blah'. I'm not making that up. Nor am I filling in the 'blah's. They're all from screenwriters Bob DeRosa and Ted Griffin. And they're making this review all too easy.

Because, in case you haven't guessed it yet, Killers is 'blah'. It is infected in its very soul by blah. Blah has seeped through its pores and out on to the screen. Blah is upfront and centre in only the way that true blah can be.

In really serious terms what that means is that as an action film Killers doesn't feature enough action and as a comedy Killers doesn't feature enough blah. Humour! I mean humour.

In fact, Robert Luketic's film might be one of the blandest films currently available. His main location, a cookie-cutter housing estate, oozes blandness and his leads (Kutcher is joined by Katherine Heigl) do little to excite throughout the entire runtime, Kutcher apparently still holding the belief that speaking in a slightly deeper voice is the same thing as showing dramatic range or emphasis. Heigl fares slightly better but DeRosa and Griffin's script gives her little to work with and early scenes which at least have an inkling of charm are soon forgotten once the plot moves on.

The plot (which, on paper, is anything but blah) sets itself up to reveal a host of hilarious situations in its second half as Jen (Heigl) begins to realise that new husband Spencer is a former professional hitman. In its inception it has the potential to work but in the end it is ruined by its inconsistencies. Luketic spends the whole of the first half telling us how few risks Jen takes - how she hates bungee-jumping or danger of any sort - but come Spencer's big reveal Jen rather takes it all in her stride, quickly calling the gun she is forced to carry 'her gun' and wielding it like a professional thus wasting all the comic potential the first half spent forty-minutes trying to create.

To call Killers' ending a conclusion would be doing a disservice to conclusions everywhere. Its brief, makes little-to-no sense whatsoever and doesn't even hint at having a dramatic payoff. Token comedy parents played by Catherine O'Hara and Tom Selleck sum the piece up: they should be hilarious. Instead they're blah. Apart from Selleck's moustache. Which is magnificent.

Look further...

'The movie tries to have random dramatic moments--though brief and underperformed--and they always fell flat and took away the momentum that it should have been trying to build the whole way out' - Reel Talk, D