Reviewed by
Christopher Armstead
Not that Ashton Kutcher needs or wants my pity but I’m going to give it to the boy anyway. You see there seems to be a lot of hate flowing Ashton’s way and I hope that the young man, who is reported to be some kind of genius, knows why this is. He’s tall, the girls tell me he’s good looking, he’s rich – at least when compared to people I know, he gets to have sex with Demi Moore on the regular and in this movie ‘Killers’ he got to cup Katherine Heigl’s breasts and kiss each one. Seriously. But as often happens to young good looking people of marginal talent who have the world by the tail, the backlash can be fierce and certain people are straight up hating on Ashton Kutcher. We’re not going to do that because Ashton seems like a nice young man to me. We’re not going to sit here and tell you that ‘Killers’ is any good either, because it ain’t, but that’s only because it ain’t, in my opinion at least, and not because we’re hating on Ashton Kutcher.
Jen (Heigl) is sad because her boyfriend has dumped her. So to stem her sadness she travels with her parents Frank (Tom Selleck) and Kathy (Catherine O’Hara) to the isle of Nice for a little vacay. Don’t know why this thirty year old woman possessing domineering height and oppressive beauty chose to drown her sorrows with her parents but we’re rolling with it. On this trip she will meet international Agency hitman, Super Spy, Spencer Aimes (Kutcher). In between killing people and setting bombs, somehow this awkward, albeit tall, blonde, physically impressive specimen of a woman has caught his eye and captured his heart in a whirlwind romance which has prompted Spencer to quit The Agency. Actually whirlwind probably isn’t the correct word since there really isn’t a word to chronicle how fast these kids went from meeting each other to being married for three years.
As mentioned, three years later all is good. Spencer is the owner of some kind of construction company, Jen is an IT security consultant or something, they love each
other, have sex often and they tolerate Jen’s oppressive, doubting father and drunken mother. Then Spence gets a call from his ex-boss (Martin Mull). He wants him back in the game ‘cause you know you can’t ever get out the game. Spence tells him ‘no way’ but then the assassins come a calling. Jen was supposed to be in San Fran giving a presentation of some kind but instead wanted to spend time with her man and now she’s in the middle of the kill-fest.
During pauses of the mayhem and chaos and murders, Jen wants to know why folks are trying to kill her man, and herself for that matter. When Spence breaks it down for her, she’s not happy, with a lot of her unhappiness attributed to a sudden hormonal condition alteration. Nonetheless killers are everywhere, from the neighbors to employees to UPS drivers with Spence trying to figure out how and why he has became a marked man. I think it has something to do with ‘getting out of the game’.
‘Killers’, truth be told, isn’t that bad I guess. I mean it certainly has its challenges to overcome as a piece of solid, viable entertainment from the truncated, underdeveloped almost non-existent storyline to the simple fact that Ashton Kutcher and Katherine Heigl, outside of both of these kids being really good looking, didn’t really seem to fit all that well together as a married couple. Now you might think that mentioning that a movie with a storyline that isn’t all that great and pointing out that the lead actors have very little chemistry together is almost a sure fire equation for a crap movie, and you would be right in thinking that, but ‘Killers’ isn’t without a certain amount of charm and we’re the kind of people that like to focus on the positive stuff.
Take Catherine O’Hara for instance. While alcoholism probably stopped being funny around the time W.C. Fields died, still, Ms. O’Hara was pretty funny in this movie even when she was sitting around, saying nothing, and making funny faces. Then there’s the ‘Magnum P.I’ factor which states clearly that having Tom Selleck anywhere in your movie is a good thing. Except maybe when he’s sticking his tongue down Kevin Kline’s throat which, you know, was disturbing. Also I can safely say that I was never bored during this movie, possibly because I was amped up on Raisenettes or maybe because the movie moved briskly, particularly in the absence of any kind of a logical narrative.
What I didn’t quite get, recognizing that Ashton Kutcher isn’t the second coming of Marlon Brando, is why director Robert Luketic throttled down what Kutcher does do well which is be funny and charming. Here he was mostly sour and serious. It’s a silly RomCom, let the boy do what he does best.
So while ‘Killers’ isn’t a good action Romantic Comedy, you might want to opt for ‘Knight and Day’ to see a modern version of this concept done much better, it’s really not as bad as folks have been saying. But then that’s just my opinion.
