A Scientist at the Movies Reviews by Greg Paris

The Evaluation System Reviews by Title Reviews by Date

Reviews from Video Reviews of the Classics Personal Background

Title: Killers

Date Viewed: 6/9/10

Details:

Ashton Kutcher

Katherine Heigl

Tom Selleck

Catherine O'Hara

Director: Robert Luketic

Score: +

The Review: The first of two summer fluff-pieces with leading men as assassins and leading women as naive vacationers caught (eventually) in a complicated web (see alsoKnight and Day).

Engaging, entertaining, often quite funny -- although this turns out a bit darker than the Cruise / Diaz vehicle. From the trailers, you are led to think this is a minor variation onMr & Mrs Smith.But it's not -- that's just selective trailer editing. What this is, is an amusing masquerade where almost no one is who they seem to be, with disastrous (and occasionally quite funny) consequences.

Ashton Kutcher plays Spencer Aimes, undercover agent and assassin on contract to some mysterious black agency (since he's going after drug dealers, we assume the agency is on "our" side). We meet Spencer on what will turn out to be his last mission -- because he meets and falls in love with Katherine Heigl's Jen, who's on vacation with her controlling parents (Selleck and O'Hara). In the wake of abandoning his clandestine career, he takes up a much more boring job -- until he is re-activated by his former controller. Then things go intensely weird, and the neighborhood turns feral.

May not withstand a second viewing, but is a great ride once.

(15-Aug-10)

Back to the chronological list of reviews