Killer Elite by Gary McKendry, 2011 (R)

with Jason Statham (The Italian Job), Clive Owen (Duplicity), Robert De Niro (Marvin's Room, Limitless, Jackie Brown), Dominic Purcell, Aden Young, Yvonne Strahovski, Ben Mendelsohn, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Grant Bowler, Michael Dorman, Firass Dirani, Lachy Hulme, Sandy Greenwood

This globe-trotting thriller, based on a novel "The Feather Men" by Sir Ranulph Fiennes, follows Danny Bryce, a former British special ops tough guy forced to come out of retirement when his mentor is kidnapped by a ruthless criminal in the beginning of the 80s. Enraged, Danny has to dodge three top assassins.

In between two weeks of extreme rush, nothing better than a good action movie to release the stress and change your mind. The departing plot in interesting, an alternative I guess to "RED", with ex-agents, retired killers, killers who cannot let it go and retire. The context is real, which brings up the SAS that are the British CIA, and a war started in the 70s in Oman. It seems that we will have an insider look at what goes on in the family of the Sheikh, with one son still alive and not very interested in taking over the business of the father, oil, living in the desert. It seems that it will be a tedious job figuring who of the SAS agents killed the other sons of the Sheikh, leading to a chase, interrogation scene, strategy. Also, since they have to get the testimonies of these agents before they are killed in a natural manner, the movie would go into being intelligent and stratege. But not, everything becomes lost and found, agents speak out their murders, they have they name on the mailbox... So the plot evolves into a economical machination of the british towards facilitating those murders so they can get the exclusive contract with the Sheikh on the oil. But even there, there are two lines of dialogue and that's it. Basically, the film is an action movie with great combats, stunts, but pretending to be at times a spy movie, an economical analysis, even a romantic drama. Wrong! If a movie has to be an action movie, don't tease your audience with leads that will never be explored.