ManVsMovies.com

King of Killers was directed and written by Kevin Grevioux and stars Alain Moussi, Marie Avgeropoulos, Shannon Kook, Georges St-Pierre, Ryan Tarran, Kevin Grevioux, Gianni Capaldi, Stephen Dorff, and Frank Grillo. It’s about a group of international assassins who all take a contract to kill a man presumed to be the best killer in the world, only to find their task is more complicated than they thought.

The Plot: It’d be easy to label King of Killers as another John Wick knockoff, and in truth, maybe it is, but filmmakers have been making movies with this basic idea for over 60 years. Grevioux doesn’t add anything to the genre here, with an abandoned plot and a failure to resolve the central conflict the only notable inclusion.

A year after taking an assignment from Xane (Dorff) that cost him the life of his wife (in a rather avoidable way), hitman Marcus (Moussi) has ditched the profession and is trying to identify the true killer; until he gets a letter from Roman (Capaldi), inviting him to try his hand at earning $10 million for killing Drakos (Grillo). In a quick and easy way to get Marcus to accept, King of Killers introduces his daughter’s heart problems, pulling the protagonist into the assignment without creativity.

Of course, a lot of people like the idea of a $10 million payday, so there’s a handful of other players in the game, like Asha (Avgeropoulos), Ren (Kook), Angus (St-Pierre), Rick (Tarran), and Dyson (Grevioux). It’s all standard procedure at this point, and the script doesn’t have the worldbuilding to make it feel otherwise, despite the copious amounts of exposition dumping. King of Killers only has two interesting caveats among its abandoned subplots. One: the contract has been organized by Drakos himself, and two: contestants must face Drakos one by one. By the end, it’s simple, yet complex, and unrewarding.

The Characters: Many action movies have scraped by on the personalities of their rosters, and just as many have attempted to give histories to their ensembles. When mixed, it’s rare that there’s a memorable face in the mix, largely due to the sheer size of the cast, which is the case here.

Marcus is a pale imitation of many action icons; a dead wife, a sick kid, a lack of funds, and a talent for bloodshed make up the tenets of the character. You’ll never see me write that this can’t still work, in most cases, this archetype needs something in between those lines. Beyond a vague history in the “Alphabet Company” and a wall of weapons in his base, Marcus doesn’t fit that bill. Moussi does his best to humanize the character, delivering more emotion than one might expect, but it’s in service of a thinly sketched slate.

Whereas other movies with a large cast of characters take advantage of the power of suggestion in regard to personalities and histories (i.e., The Expendables and John Wick franchises), others insist on literally reading out each supporting character’s traits. King of Killers tries to do that, but the attempt only adds up to “unstable good person who did bad thing and is stuck working for the highest bidder” in almost all cases. Grevioux tries to create a history between Marcus and Asha, but it goes nowhere.

Drakos is another blank slate, personality-wise. Having done it all in his career as a contract killer and holding the money to do whatever he wants with it, this game is his final task on the bucket list. While there could’ve been a huge, all-powerful, and zany baddie with the idea, King of Killers sticks to seriousness, keeping the emperor-esque potential out of frame alongside any originality in character writing.

The Action: Working from a comic series of his own creation, Grevioux, who created the Underworld universe, should have another interesting slant on action, but this time he comes up short. There are a few competent and somewhat riveting sequences, but this game isn’t all that re-playable.

Although the first spate of combat isn’t related to Drakos’s game, it might be the best setpiece King of Killers has to offer. For his last job with Xane, Marcus has to take out a few gangsters in the back of a classy restaurant. In one of the few flashes of flair, the scene is choreographed in something of a circle, as Marcus and the baddies work their way around the room while trying to stay parallel to each other. With comic book influences in mind, it works, and adding in a few moments like a guy popping out of a door covered in cocaine and the sight of a limb breaking at a nearly 90-degree angle, it’s a good slice of action.

Because the movie needed context and didn’t know how to deliver it in an interesting way, the fighting stops for about a half hour. Most of what comes next isn’t worth that wait, as Drakos just camps whenever possible. Almost all of the contractors get off an elevator to the cluttered combat floor of his building and meander until their quarry springs from a corner or back room, giving him an unfair advantage. That’s by design, of course, but the lackluster choreography for the majority of the fights doesn’t make the encounters intimidating, just predictable – sans the rather gruesome deaths that punctuate each sequence.

Some of Drakos’s traps and assets litter King of Killers’ main battleground, and while they break up the repetition of the confrontations, they don’t really add much to the feature. Things like turning on strobe lights and high-pitched noisemakers in the middle of fights that he’s essentially already won give breathing room for the stunt coordinators but just feel like filler in practice. None of what’s listed above is bad – it’s (almost) all acceptable action filmmaking, but it’s just too bland overall.

The Technics: Though he has written before, King of Killers marks the directorial debut of Kevin Grevioux, and the result is largely competent, but lacking a distinctive touch that would set most movies of this ilk apart from each other.

One thing I can claim with certainty is lifted from the John Wick franchise is the color grading and lighting technique. Cinematographer Paul Suderman favors saturated blues, purples, and greens that contrast the inky shadows of the main setting. A lack of budget limits any actual shooting/composition style though, and locations that largely consist of empty concrete rooms and an office floor further reduce his chances at a unique looking film. There’s some slow-mo thrown into some of the action, but it only really works in the beginning setpiece, as the barebones nature of the movie hasn’t yet shown itself.

It doesn’t run ragged, but forgettable characters and dialogue mixed with a low budget don’t add up to extraordinary results. Pacing is a killer issue here, as the movie stops and starts with frequency, even during the final battle, most of the time just to pile on latent exposition about characters whose fates have long since been sealed. Apart from that, there are some normal B-movie pitfalls like an overreliance on subpar CGI and a few choppily edited moments, but these aren’t exclusive or unforgiveable.

I’d like to hope that the comic book King of Killers is based on is more original and entertaining than its filmed adaptation, as the feature is just a thin, bland action movie with no jewels in its crown.

41/100