“Killers”

Reviewed 10 June 2010 by Ted Faraone

Four stars out five; $9.50 ticket on a scale of $0 to $12.75.

CHARMING SPOOKS

Lionsgate Films bills “Killers,” the Katherine Heigl - Ashton Kutcher feature released on June 4, as “Action/Comedy/Romance/Thriller.”  That’s not entirely accurate.  It’s really a screwball comedy in the tradition of “To Be or Not to Be” (the Jack Benny - Carole Lombard farce directed by Ernst Lubitsch in 1942).  The stars are charming.  The situations are farcical.  There is just enough absurd, stylized violence to satisfy today’s teenagers.  And it moves along at a great clip.  It is roughly 100 minutes long, and it never bogs down.

It is also the film that answers the question, “Do girls always marry guys like their fathers?”  The answer is yes.

Plot is straightforward -- with the necessary screwball twists.  Heigl’s Jen is on the bounce from a failed relationship.  She’s also on a trip to the French Riviera with her parents (Tom Selleck and Catherine O’Hara as the Kornfeldts).  There she has a chance encounter with the sinfully buff and handsome Kutcher (Spencer Aimes).  At the meet-cute he introduces himself as a “consultant.”  It soon becomes clear through exposition that he is a CIA killer, whose job is eliminating enemies of America.

Love intervenes and the nets descend.  He quits the spy game.  They marry, and we fast forward three years.  That’s when the fun begins.  People (mostly his neighbors and co-workers) start trying to kill him.  There is a $20 million price on his head.  He has no idea why.  In the middle of car chases, assassination attempts, and more close calls than your critic can count, Jen says that she thinks she’s pregnant.  (The drugstore scene where they buy pregnancy tests while on the lam from killers is priceless.)  Spencer comes clean about his past.  And Jen gets tough in a hurry… both with her husband and the folks trying to kill him.  Violence is comic, not bloody.  This is not the “Saw” series. 

Finally, it is revealed that Spencer is not pic’s only character with a double life.  Selleck’s Kornfeldt who claims to be an airline pilot and is clearly an overprotective dad, is actually a former government agent whose world intersected with Spencer’s.  It seems that he has harbored for three years the thought that a helicopter explosion on the Riviera was meant for him.  Spencer was point man.  It was his last CIA assignment.  It is Kornfeldt who put the hit on Spencer.  Ultimately, however, chick power rules.

“Killers” is totally preposterous.  There is no world crisis, like the German occupation of Poland in “To Be or Not to Be,” to endear us to the stars.  But pic gets by on charm, on juxtaposition (suburbanites in a picture perfect neighborhood turning into cold blooded killers), and on some very funny acting largely by Heigl, Kutcher, and O’Hara.  Selleck excels as the ex-spook/overprotective dad.  He almost channels the part.  Robert Luketic’s direction is spot-on.  Screenplay by Bob DeRosa and T.M. Griffin is witty and sharp.  Rolfe Kent’s lensing is good.  And Mary Jo Markey and Richard Francis-Bruce wielded a cold machete in the editing room.  Special mention should go to Missy Stewart for sets that really help set up pic’s jokes.  Sound recording leaves little to be desired.

“Killers” is rated PG-13 largely for one profanity uttered by Heigl’s Jen.  The profanity is unnecessary and sounds out of character.  Other than that, “Killers” is not inappropriate for children.  Your critic thinks they will laugh out loud.  Yes, “Killers” is a cinematic trifle, but it’s very funny one, and triviality should not be held against it.

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