As a general rule, hitmen should probably steer clear of doctors. In the movies, at least, it never leads to anything good. For example, Michael Keaton’s title character recently received a devastating dementia diagnosis in Knox Goes Away , barely managing to get his affairs in order and clear his son of a murder rap before losing his mind.
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Joe Flood (Dave Bautista), the central character in The Killer’s Game , suffers from debilitating headaches and double vision while fulfilling lethal assignments and dutifully undergoes a series of medical tests. He’s informed that he has an incurable disease that will quickly destroy his faculties and bring death within three months. So Joe naturally does what any self-respecting contract killer, especially one who’s recently fallen in love, would do. He puts out a hit on himself, paying a $2 million bounty so that he’ll leave the world with dignity and provide a nice nest egg for his beautiful ballerina fiancée, Maize (Sofia Boutella).
Not long after, Joe receives a series of frantic text messages from his doctor saying that the lab mixed up his test results with someone else’s and that he’s fine (don’t you hate when that happens?). The only problem is that now he has every hired killer in Europe after him.
That’s the contrived premise of J.J. Perry’s action-comedy, which even manages to throw some romance into its high-concept mix. That the film works to the extent that it does is largely due to the unique charms of its muscular leading man and the well-staged, extremely brutal fight sequences featuring enough gore to test the boundaries of an R rating.
Screenwriters Rand Ravich and James Coyne, adapting a book by Jay R. Bonansinga, strain mightily for a quirky black humor that succeeds only sporadically. Taking their orders from the mysterious Antoinette (the always excellent Pom Klementieff of the Guardians of the Galaxy series), who’s all too happy to accept Joe’s money because she holds a grudge against him, the assassins are a comically exotic lot. They include a French killer who weaves flamenco dance moves into his murders, a pair of lethal Scottish brothers whose unintelligible dialogue has to be subtitled and a physically imposing pro (Terry Crews) who’s annoyingly saddled with an inept assistant.
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Much of the comedy stems from Joe’s loving relationship with his handler Zvi Rabinowitz (a very funny Ben Kingsley, clearly relishing the opportunity to unveil one of his many accents) and Zvi’s exuberant wife (Alex Kingston), who treat Joe like the son they never had. Their barb-filled banter could easily be taking place on a bench in Boca Raton, with Zvi frequently spouting an aphorism about how to leave their profession: “You walk away clean, or you go out on your back.”
The picture benefits greatly from its beautiful European locations, especially Budapest, whose opera house is the setting for the elaborate opening action sequence. And the love story improbably works, with Bautista looking like a besotted Shrek when he scoops up the lithe Boutella in his arms and displays the wide smile that makes him look lovable rather than menacing. The actor’s decidedly offbeat screen presence, plus of course his formidable physicality, make him a perfect fit for the character.
Nonetheless, The Killer’s Game has a tired air of familiarity that makes it wear out its welcome long before its conclusion. It’s the kind of film in which you practically count the minutes until a character utters the words, “Don’t hate the player, hate the game.”
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