The other day my friend and I were discussing movies based on fact; you know the classic movie tagline, "Based on true events." It is somewhat of a misnomer because that can mean almost anything. Characters are changed around, inconvenient facts are ignored, other events are flat out invented, so it is important to take movies that present itself as factual with a grain of salt; they almost never are.
There is a caption in the beginning of the film that claims Killer Elite is based on real events. If this were true, it would be an incredible story full of espionage, murder, and intrigue. However, the characters are a little too incredible, the action a little too good for me to really believe this. Take away the "based on real events" tagline and what you end up getting is a somewhat pedestrian action thriller. The action would be spectacular in real life, but not really in the movies. The story would be fascinating if true, but not really in the movies. If you're going to take liberties with the truth, you might as well make it bigger and louder and more intriguing, otherwise you end up with a sort of wishy washy movie that tries to ground itself in fact but touched up for Hollywood.
As it turns out, the events of this movie are based on the book The Feather Men which itself claims to be based on fact. So why is the movie called Killer Elite rather than The Feather Men? Well aside from the more macho title, it's because the movie isn't really even about the events of the book. It takes one premise of it, the assassination of former SAS members over a seventeen year period, and makes an action picture out of it that spans no more than one month led by one man when in reality it must have been an entire multi-million dollar covert government operation. From what I gather, the character that Clive Owens plays may very well be based on a real person, but Jason Statham's character, the protagonist of the film, is almost certainly fictionalized or heavily altered. This begs the question then, if you don't have fact based characters and events to limit you, then why couldn't the writer of the screenplay write something more interesting than what he came up with?
Anyways, all that aside, it isn't a film's responsibility to present itself as factual. I don't hate on period films if they're wildly inaccurate, that is of course unless they claim themselves to be based on fact which Killer Elite sort of does. Either way, the film isn't really that interesting. It is also a bad sign if in the middle of an action movie, you think to yourself, "Man, this is a really long movie," only to find out that it isn't even two hours long. I like Jason Statham but it seems to be he plays the same character in every movie.
All in all, a pretty mediocre action movie that has its moments of intrigue and excitement, but also has long lulls that I wish were cut shorter or made more interesting. One of the questions I like to ask myself about the worthiness of a film is if I will remember anything notable from it three months from now; the answer to this movie is no.
Grade: C+
No comments:
Post a Comment