My Thoughts on “The Killer’s Game”

 

(This is the poster for The Killer’s Game.) 

I was starting to think that I was never going to get this one, but I finally did, thanks to my grandma. I finally got her to watch with me today (Saturday March 1, 2025), after the both of us kept putting it off for about two or three weeks ever since I bought it. But, sometimes, we weren’t weren’t consciously putting it off, sometimes we just forgot to watch it, like this one night when we were having a barbecue (we were having hamburgers 🍔 cooked on the grill), we were going to watch it with our food, but we both just forgot. Or to be more precise, my grandma forgot. I remembered, but I didn’t say anything because I hoping that she would remember and I was just waiting for her to say something. I wanted to watch it with her, so I was just waiting until she had free time and when she was in the mood to watch it. Had she forgotten this time again, I probably would’ve just watched the movie myself because I really want to write this review of it. 

This is a movie that I wanted to see last year, in 2024, ever since I saw the trailer for it back in June, and had I watched it last year, I would’ve included it in my 2024 New Year’s Eve Recap. Check that out if you’re interested. But, I never got around to it. There were a few other movies like that I wanted to see and review for this blog but never got the chance to, not just this one. There was Civil War 🇺🇸 (2024), there was Venom: The Last Dance, there was Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, there was Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie 🐿️, and there was Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (2024). 

 

Those were the ones that I wanted to see in 2024, but didn’t get the chance to because we were either busy or we didn’t have enough money 💵 or gas ⛽️ to go, or a combination of those two. I missed Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (2024) because it was a December release, and everyone was focused on the holidays, Christmas 🎄 and New Year’s Eve 🥳. Any movies that I was interested in that I missed in 2024 for whatever reason I will make an effort to try to see this year, 2025, and review for this blog, as well as any new releases this year. 

 

My eyes 👀 are currently set on A Working Man ♂︎, the upcoming Jason Statham action movie from David Ayer, the same guy ♂︎ who directed The Beekeeper 🐝 from last year (I wrote a review of that if you’re interested), as well as other movies like Suicide Squad (2016), Sabotage, Bright, End of Watch, and The Tax Collector. I was hoping that he and Statham would make a Beekeeper 🐝 sequel, but I guess this will do. It seems Ayer is going to do a Statham action movie annually, just like how Guy Ritchie has been trying to put out a new movie every single year. If that’s the case, then I’m on board. 

 

It is funny though that in the trailers for both The Beekeeper 🐝 and A Working Man ♂︎, they keep saying “From the director of Suicide Squad” as if that’s enough of a selling point to entice people to want to go see the movie. People didn’t even really like Suicide Squad (2016), and the people did are in the minority. I just thought it was okay, but I do think it could’ve been way better. I would like to see an Ayer Cut of that movie, even if it’s pretty unlikely to happen at this point. They made an exception with Zack Snyder’s Justice League, they let the Snyder Cut come out because they needed content for HBO Max (now called Max), but now that it’s been firmly established and they have plenty of content available on the platform, there’s no longer any reason to release an alternate cut of a movie from 8 years ago. 

 

A movie that hardly anyone liked, and that they’d rather just bury and pretend didn’t happen. Especially now that they’ve put James Gunn in charge of DC, and tasked him with creating a new DC cinematic universe after the DCEU crashed and burned. Even though of course, the DCEU only failed because of their own screw-ups, their own boneheaded decisions, like removing Zack Snyder from the director’s chair, and putting Joss Whedon in there to haphazardly reshoot and re-edit Justice League to make it more lighthearted and more like an MCU movie, and then hastily trying to course correct and make the DCEU as a whole more lighthearted and as far removed from Zack Snyder as possible. Giving into the backlash towards Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (BVS). Until the whole thing was a huge mess, and they kind of just stopped caring about it all being connected and making any sense. 

 

Warner Bros. was down to just throwing anything at the wall and seeing what sticks by the end. Now, they’ve wiped the slate completely clean and are starting over with a new DC cinematic universe, simply called the DC Universe, or DCU for short. They shortened it so it would only be three letters when abbreviated just like the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe). They really want this to be their MCU, and I’m sure Gunn will deliver that for them. With Gunn in charge, the Ayer Cut of Suicide Squad (2016) will probably never come out, especially since Gunn prefers his own Suicide Squad movie, The Suicide Squad (2021), so much so that he made a spinoff show about it with Peacemaker, and it’s the only DCEU movie that will remain canon with the new DCU. If it won’t all be tied together with the multiverse that is, then everything will technically be canon because it’s a multiverse 😃 😒. But, I don’t think Ayer will be too broken up about it though since it seems like he’s having fun making these mid budget Jason Statham action movies, and I’m there for it. 

I was hoping to review this movie, The Killer’s Game, in February, so that the month of February wouldn’t just be reposts and me talking about movie trailers that just came out that I saw and am interested in seeing, or not interested in seeing in the case of Death of a Unicorn 🦄. But, like I said before, we kept delaying it, and putting it off, and forgetting about it, so my post about the second trailer for Death of a Unicorn 🦄 ended up being last post for February 😒. I didn’t review The Killer’s Game, or Venom: The Last Dance, or Man of Steel (remember when I said I wanted to review Man of Steel?). 

 

To be fair, I did say that if I didn’t get to Venom: The Last Dance and Man of Steel in February, I would review them in March, and I only tried to watch and review The Killer’s Game in February because I saw it at Walmart and bought it when we went to Albuquerque for my grandma’s payday. I wasn’t even expecting to see it there, I wasn’t even looking to find it, but when I saw it and I saw it going for $19, I knew I couldn’t resist. We were trying to get that movie for months, we were hoping that my aunt would get it for us on her Fandango at Home account, but she never did. So, when I saw it at Walmart, I decided to take matters into my own hands, and buy it on Blu-Ray 💿. I’d rather watch it on physical media than watch it on streaming or VOD (video-on-demand) anyway. So, I guess being the first post of March will have to do. 

I didn’t know anything about the movie other than the basic premise of the movie that it’s about an assassin (a hitman) who puts a hit on himself after he’s diagnosed with an incurable brain disease 🧠 and is convinced that he only has a few months to live. But then it turns out he doesn’t have a disease, that the diagnosis was a mistake, and that he just put a hit on himself for nothing. So he tries desperately to get the contact on him canceled, but the person who he had put the contact on him refuses to do it, as they have a personal vendetta against him and want to see him dead. So, he ends up having to fight for his life against all of the other assassins that are trying to collect the reward. I didn’t watch any reviews, or watch any clips online, I chose to go in as blind as I could so that everything would be a surprise to me and my grandma when we actually sat down and watched it. So, I had no real idea of what to expect, and I had no idea where this movie was going to go besides the basic setup. I wasn’t even completely sure if I was going to like it. 

I was hoping that I would, I just wanted a fun action movie that I could watch with my grandma and have fun with, and luckily, that’s what I got. The Killer’s Game is a really good movie, me and my grandma liked it a lot. It delivers on the action, there are some really awesome kills in this, it’s very bloody 🩸 and gory at times, which is how I like my action. There are not a lot of shootouts, the movie puts a lot more emphasis on the hand-to-hand and melee combat once the plot really starts getting going, like there’s a lot more gunplay in the first half than there are in the second half. Probably the biggest shootout in the movie is that one at the end in the church ⛪️ that Joe Flood (Dave Bautista’s character) and Maize (Sophia Boutella’s character) initially hide out in and then try to do a shotgun wedding after Joe finds out that Maize’s pregnant 🤰. 

 

Just as they’re getting married 💍 and they’re saying their vows, the church ⛪️ gets attacked Lovedahl (Terry Crews’s character) and a bunch of mercenaries sent by Antoinette (Pom Klementieff’s character), and they have a final shootout in there, not too dissimilar to the final shootout in the John Woo action movie The Killer (1989). That’s funny, The Killer, The Killer’s Game, funny how that works out 😁. Maybe them setting the final shootout in a church ⛪️ was their way of paying homage to The Killer (1989), which I learned while I was writing this was remade by John Woo himself last year, it was an English-language remake called The Killer (2024). I may have to look into that one, but only after I watch the 1989 original. 

Speaking of fun naming conventions, I think I know why Dave Bautista’s character is named Joe Flood, it’s supposed to kind of be pun or a reference to the fact that he’s a hitman. “Wet worker” is a euphemistic nickname for hitmen, I don’t know why wet worker specifically is the nickname chosen, but I’m guessing because the job involves a lot of blood 🩸, therefore it’s a wet job, you’re going to get wet or get things wet with blood 🩸. Hence, hitmen are wet workers. Flooding is when an area gets submerged in water 💦 or some other liquid (usually a place that isn’t supposed to be submerged in water 💦 or other liquids), so the filmmakers decided to name the protagonist of the film, Joe Flood to not so subtle hint at his profession as a hitman, a wet worker. The wet worker thing is also why the video game Wet is called Wet. Also, this isn’t the only time that the word “flood” has been used to name something that has to do with water 💦 or liquid, since that water spraying machine 💦 that Mario uses in Super Mario Sunshine ☀️ is called FLUDD, Flash Liquidizer Ultra Dousing Device. 

The first half of the movie mostly deals with Joe’s relationship with this ballet dancer 🩰 Maize, who he saw while on a job in this opera house, and him deciding to quit the hitman business. So, even before he gets the false diagnosis, he wants to get out and have a normal life where he isn’t killing people. It’s a trope we’ve seen a bunch of times in other movies, the “assassin that doesn’t want to kill people anymore and wants to retire and have a normal life.” I don’t mind, I don’t hate that particular trope or anything, it’s a good way of endearing the protagonist to the audience (like “see, he feels sorry about killing people and wants to stop doing it”), but for once I would like to see a movie where the assassin actually enjoys being an assassin and wants to keep doing it. That’s why Nobody was such a breath of fresh air, it was about a retired assassin who’s bored with his normal suburban life and immediately goes back to killing people when given the chance. Hutch actually enjoys killing people, and wants to do it again, even if it’s just for a little bit. He wasn’t cut out for a normal civilian life. That’s what separates him from other action movie protagonists like John Wick, Robert McCall, Ladybug 🐞, Adam Clay, Ito, Ah Jong, and this guy ♂︎, Joe Flood. 

 

I will say that they probably shouldn’t put the fact that Joe doesn’t actually have a disease, and he was misdiagnosed in the trailer. Because in the movie itself, it’s kind of played like it’s a huge plot twist that he didn’t actually have a disease and he was misdiagnosed. But the movie isn’t ruined by them revealing that in the trailer because now it’s apart of the setup, and if anything it makes it more of a comedy. But, even if he didn’t actually have Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease like his doctor told him, it is clear that something was wrong with him. Throughout the first half of the movie, he keeps having these debilitating headaches and blurred vision, while the whole world feels like it’s shaking to him, so even if he didn’t specifically have CJD, there was clearly something wrong with him. And even that’s played up for laughs, because it turns out he just had crick in his neck, and just needed some chiropractic. Zvi Rabinowitz (Ben Kingsley’s character)’s wife Sophia (Alex Kingston’s character) cracks his neck and then he’s fine, he’s cured. He never has headaches or blurred vision (or double vision since he complains about double vision too) for the rest of the movie. 

The movie takes places entirely in Europe, which I did expect from watching the trailer, it did look like a very Eurocentric movie. But, the part that surprised me was that it took place in Hungary 🇭🇺, specifically in the capital city, Budapest. I was thinking that it was going to take place in Paris or that parts of it would take in Paris, because a lot of action movies like this take place Paris. But, no we never go to Paris in this movie, but we do go to Corsica at one point, and Corsica is French territory 🇫🇷, so I guess it counts. Parts of the movie occur in Spain 🇪🇸, Switzerland 🇨🇭, Romania 🇷🇴, and I believe the Netherlands 🇳🇱 and Germany 🇩🇪, but I’m not quite so sure about those two, I might be wrong about those. If I am, I’ll edit this part at a later date. But, the majority of the movie takes place in Hungary 🇭🇺, which as many of you know, is a dictatorship. So far the only dictatorship inside of the European Union 🇪🇺. The entire first half of the movie takes place in Budapest, and then in the second half, there’s a castle 🏰 and a church ⛪️. The movie never specifies where the castle 🏰 or the church ⛪️ are located, like it never says they’re outside of Hungary 🇭🇺 or anything like that. So, I’m just going to assume that they’re both located in Hungary 🇭🇺. 

The movie’s also full of a ton of laughs, like this movie is just as much of a comedy as it is an action movie. It is most accurately described as an action-comedy. Most of the humor comes from Lovedahl and his interactions with Antoinette’s idiot cousin Money 💵 (yes that his actual name), who he gets paired up with by Antoinette when he agrees to accept the contract and go after Joe. But, there are other funny moments that don’t involve those two, and they’re not the ones who get laughs out of, we get some funny jokes out of Joe, Zvi, Zvi’s wife Sharon, and the colorful assassins that go after Joe in the second half of the movie. And like I said, even the premise and the plot twist are kind of funny and played for laughs, an assassin who’s misdiagnosed with an incurable disease, puts a hit on himself, only to learn that he was misdiagnosed, and now to fight for his life against every assassin in the known universe. That’s an exaggeration, I know that it’s just every assassin in Europe, and not every assassin in the known universe. I’m just saying. On top that, he learns that the reason why he was having headaches and bad vision was that he just had a crick in his neck, he had a lot of tension and stress in his neck, and all he needed to do was crack his neck. That’s funny, that’s a funny plot and plot twist 😄. 

 

This movie has a pretty stacked cast, Dave Bautista, Sophia Boutella, Ben Kingsley, Terry Crews, Pom Klementieff, Scott Adkins. I didn’t even know that Scott Adkins was even in this movie until I actually saw this movie. He plays a Scottish hitman 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 named Angus Mackenzie who’s subtitled along with his brother Rory (Drew Galloway), because of their thick accents. Most Americans 🇺🇸 can’t understand what Scottish people 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 say even when they’re speaking English, so having subtitles is helpful, and is part of this movie’s humor and style. This movie has a lot of style, it has a lot of personality, which goes along way in an action movie like this. It helps if if has style and personality. 

 

Dave Bautista is really good in this, he’s a funny guy ♂︎, and he’s great at all the action. It makes wish that he did more action movies like this. The only straight up action movie that I’ve seen him do besides this one that wasn’t a Marvel thing or Dune was Army of the Dead 🧟‍♂️🎰. I understand why he tends to avoid them. He wants to do unique roles, and not just be limited to just being an action guy ♂︎ like Dwayne Johnson and John Cena. He doesn’t want to end up like Dwayne where he gets too comfortable and complacent just being an action star. He wants to do different kinds of roles and be taken seriously as actor, not just a big muscle guy ♂︎. 

 

Even though he did take this, and it is an action role, it isn’t quite your run of the mill action leading man ♂︎ kind of role. He isn’t just playing a big stoic guy ♂︎ who kills people, he’s playing a guy ♂︎ who’s had enough, who wants out of the assassination business, and wants to have a more normal life, and is a bit of a soft romantic type ❤️ as well, like he becomes even more motivated to leave the business when falls in love with Maize. So, it is a bit of a more sentimental and vulnerable role and not just a generic action movie role. I don’t know if I’ve said this on this blog before or not, but my younger cousin actually meet Dave Bautista in person while he was at the gym. He took a photo with him and everything. That was pretty cool. I wish I could meet a cool celebrity like that. Maybe someday. 

 

And of course, it was cool to see Terry Crews again after he had been absent from movies following that Senate hearing I guess (I don’t know for sure if it was a Senate hearing or a regular court hearing) he was in where he talked about the sexual assault allegations he made against a high-level executive at a talent agency, Adam Venit. That whole drama cost him his role in the fourth Expendables movie, The Expendables 4, or Expend4bles as it came to be known as, though judging from the trailers and the reviews, he really wasn’t missing out on much. So, it was cool to see him in another movie again, and an action movie at that, after so many years. And it’s always good to see Sophia Boutella, one of those most underrated actresses currently working in Hollywood. She got her chance to be the lead in another movie, with Rebel Moon, the two-part space opera epic by Zack Snyder that was heavily inspired by Seven Samurai. I wrote reviews of both parts if you’re interested. 
 

You also can’t go wrong with Ben Kingsley. This is the second time he’s played a similar role, as a rabbi who’s involved with the criminal underworld or assassin business in this movie’s case. The first time he played a role like this was in Lucky Number Slevin, where he played a criminal boss who happened to also be a rabbi. He’s like Joe’s handler or his employer, he’s the guy ♂︎ that gives him the hits, assigns him the targets and then pays him whenever the amount the rewards were for the people he killed. He’s sort of like a father figure to him a way, or like a really good friend, like he helps him out when he’s trying to go out on a date with Maize, and then he goes to the birthday party that Maize throws for Joe, and then he tries to talk Joe out of putting a hit on himself and to wait to get a second opinion about the diagnosis just in case it was fake, but still helps him out when Joe goes through it. 

There isn’t a lot of worldbuilding, like the movie doesn’t really delve too deeply into how this assassin underworld works. There’s no deep lore here to really delve into. I don’t mind, I think the movie not having any deep lore or worldbuilding works in its favor because that is one of the issues that I’ve had with the John Wick sequels except John Wick: Chapter 2. They got so bogged down the lore, and adding new things to it, that it started contradicting itself a little bit, and it just became harder to enjoy, at least for me. I like action movies with lore, but there is a point where it’s too much and it hinders your enjoyment of the movie, and I also like for the lore to make sense and to be consistent, which the John Wick lore really hasn’t been. So, I think it was a smart move for this movie not go too deep into its lore, so that it doesn’t like you have to do all kinds of homework to even understand it and it allows the movie to be a standalone movie. Which is what it’s going to be since it bombed at the box office 💣. Any hope for a sequel died with that $5.9 million gross 💵. The movie cost $30 million 💵 to make, so $5.9 million 💵 is definitely not a good box office take for a $30 million movie 💵 😬. 

 

That being said, I do like that the other assassins, that ones that Antoinette hires to kill Joe, were all unique personalities with their own little gimmick instead of just being generic movie assassins. I was worried that Terry Crews was going to be only fun and unique assassin of the bunch, but luckily I was wrong. I like the two female assassins ♀︎ Ginni and Tonya, and the Spanish assassin 🇪🇸 El Botas, who was like a dancer 🕺 who liked to kill people while dancing to music 🎶. The Goyang gang were also cool too. The reason why Antoinette wants to kill Joe, and why she refuses to cancel the contract on him is that she wants revenge against him for killing her father. But, as the movie later reveals, he killed her father because her father broke the rules of the “game” (that’s what they reveal to the assassin business as) by hiring mercenaries to carry out a hit. Only hitmen are allowed carry out hits. She ends up breaking that same rule in order to try to kill Joe, and for that, she’s killed too. Joe doesn’t kill her, Zvi does. Joe’s retired after all 🤷‍♂️. 

This is a movie that I would have loved to see in the theaters, I think this would’ve been a really fun theater-going experience for me and my grandma, we would’ve had a pretty good time. I really didn’t really see anyone talk about this movie. Like after the movie came out, and Dave Bautista went on the press tour to promote it and everyone freaked out his weight loss (his weight loss was perfectly healthy and natural by the way, he doesn’t have a disease or anything, don’t worry), no one talked about this movie. None of the big reviewers on YouTube really reviewed this movie, I think maybe Jeremy Jahns reviewed it, but I’m not sure. I could be completely wrong on that. 

 

But, the few people who did review the movie gave it mostly negative reviews. It currently has a 46% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes 🍅, which really shows you what critics think 🙄. At least you all know that I liked it, and that I recommend it to anyone who wants a fun action movie to watch. I hope it becomes a cult classic that’s appreciated more over time, sort of Bullet Train 🚅🇯🇵, No Escape (1994), Hudson Hawk, Man of Steel, Batman v Superman, Hulk (2003), Man on Fire ♂︎🔥 (2004), Predator 2, Predators, Lucky Number Slevin, Sucker Punch, Tank Girl ♀︎, The Quick and the Dead, Constantine (2005), Armageddon ☄️, Godzilla (1998), Death to Smoochy, The Cable Guy ♂︎, and Surviving the Game.