Trying to recover from a sudden break-up, Jen Kornfeldt believes she’ll never fall in love again. But when she reluctantly joins her parents on a trip to the French Riviera, Jen happens to meet the man of her dreams, the dashing, handsome Spencer Aimes. Three years later, her seemingly impossible wish has come true: she and Spencer are newlyweds living an idyllic suburban life – that is, until the morning after Spencer’s 30th birthday when bullets start flying. It turns out Spencer never told Jen he was once an international super-spy, and now Jen’s perfect world has been turned upside down. Jen is determined to discover what other secrets Spencer might be keeping and work out some major trust issues – all the while trying to dodge bullets, keep up neighbourly appearances, manage the in-laws…. And you thought suburban life was easy…
Directed by Robert Luketic (‘Legally Blonde’ and ‘The Ugly Truth’), ‘Killers’ is a light romantic comedy starring Ashton Kutcher and Katherine Heigl. The French city of Nice makes for a pleasant backdrop and surrounding scenery as the audience is introduced to the main characters of the film during the opening scenes.
The opening act takes its time to slowly reveal the film’s premise but does so with precious little humour to keep the audience engaged and struggles to hold interest. The two leads provide good performances and work well off each other even though the script largely feels quite flat throughout the film.
While the comedy comes together better later in the film at various times to help lift things a little, these moments feel too few and far between. When the comedic aspects of the film do shine through, it’s largely due to the delivery and timing provided by some of the supporting cast particularly Tom Selleck and Catherine O’Hara who both give funny performances particularly in the final few scenes.
Luketic keeps the action throughout quite light and entertaining with some fun sequences that for the most part match the easy tone of the rest of the film. The chase scenes are fairly run of the mill though the fight scenes are entertaining in their fast paced and at times gritty presentation, effectively catching the audience off guard and drawing attention back to the screen.
The story is serviceable in progressing things along though it generally struggles to draw the audience in. Typically the story is more concerned with setting up for some character moments in scenes rather than fleshing out too many deeper details of what’s happening around the characters and the motivations behind their actions. It’s possibly unfair to expect too much of the story given the premise is more about setting up a fun, funny and entertaining movie, unfortunately though it misses the mark on these accounts as well.
I didn’t have high expectations for ‘Killers’, though being a fan of Ashton Kutcher’s previous comedic works I was expecting at least a few very funny scenes which weren’t really delivered. It’s possibly a little unfair to expect too much from the story given the premise is more about setting up a fun, funny and entertaining movie, but unfortunately it misses the mark on these accounts as well.
Walking out after watching ‘Killers’, the entire package felt quire mediocre, various aspects of ‘Killers’ come together well at times but these moments are far too rare and really only stand out with everything else being so flat.
I give this film 2 out of 5 stars and it opens in Australian theatres on Thursday 29th July 2010.