It’s deceptively difficult to pull off a boneheaded, lighthearted, big-budget action film, as many mediocre superhero films have demonstrated over the last decades. Stuntman turned director J.J. Perry got off to a rough start with the genre in his impressively awful first feature, Day Shift (2022). But in his sophomore effort, an adaptation of Jay Bonansinga’s novel The Killer’s Game, he finds the right mixture of engagingly silly plot, stylishly brutal choreography, and charismatic protagonist.
The plot is—as you’d expect—by the numbers. Joe Flood (Dave Bautista) is a hit man with a heart of gold who falls for ballerina Maize (Sofia Boutella) while on a job in Budapest. Joe discovers he has a terminal illness and decides to put out a contract on his own life in hopes of giving Maize a big life insurance payout. Things inevitably go awry: Joe decides he doesn’t want to die, so he has to fight off an array of colorful hit people, à la the John Wick franchise.
Perry is clearly having a blast choreographing different fighting styles, from Spanish dancer assassin to Korean schoolgirl assassin. The direction is fun as well; a montage sequence that cuts with lyrical glee between Joe and Maize courting and Joe murdering targets is a highlight.
What really makes the movie, though, is Bautista, who projects a comforting sweetness even while he’s snapping some guy’s leg in half, and an intimidating brutality even when he’s struggling to flirt by text. It’s easy to see why Maize falls in love with him, and it’s hard not to fall in love with him yourself. Few actors manage that kind of mixture of charm and menace, and it turns The Killer’s Game from a run-of-the-mill genre exercise into a perfect boneheaded, lighthearted, big-budget action confection. R, 104 min.
Wide release in theaters
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