Runtime: 122 minutes
Directed by: Sam Peckinpah
Starring: James Caan, Burt Young (RIP), Bo Hopkins, Arthur Hill, Robert Duvall
From: United Artists
RIP Burt Young. This certainly wasn’t the best film he was in, although that was due to no fault of his own and the viewer gets to see him… beat up some Ninja! I actually saw this movie long ago; that was more than a decade ago and probably somewhere around 15 years ago. I wasn’t a fan, although by the time last night happened and I heard the news that Young passed away, the specific details were rather foggy. Now that I’ve seen The Killer Elite for a second time and the details have been jotted down, there’s no need to ever grant this a third viewing.
The beginning is fine; James Caan and Robert Duvall are buddies who work for a clandestine organization unofficially tied to the CIA who do a lot of dirty business. They have a camaraderie to the point that they rib each other. Of course, some of it is politically incorrect in 2023 but it's not quite as ribald as Freebie and the Bean, which is much more worthy of viewing in "James Caan hijinks in San Francisco" if you are not offended. Suddenly, Duvall cripples his friend, all for a large paycheck. Caan has to rehabilitate and that was better than expected; it may sound dull but it naturally for me is easy to root for someone to overcome serious injury due to hard work & effort.
When it all starts to fall apart is once an assignment is given to Caan (who recruits two cohorts) to protect Mako, a political rabble-rouser from the “Oriental region” to use the sort of term & attitude you hear in the film. Unfortunately, a big problem is that the movie has a rather condescending view of Far East Asian beliefs & practices, which becomes more & more apparent the deeper into the film the viewer gets. This is how we got a finale where many Ninja w/ swords are literally gunned down by machine guns AND that’s how Ol’ Burt gets the best of several martial arts masters despite his general appearance & his character’s usual profession of… automobiles. This is after Caan’s character levels many insulting comments against Mako, his daughter, and his friends; subsequently, that’s when I felt less sympathetic for Caan’s character.
The fact that even the action isn’t too good is a massive problem when the director is Sam Frickin’ Peckinpah. This is all conjecture as far as I know but alcoholic Peckinpah was apparently introduced to cocaine during filming which resulted in him not actually directing at least parts of the film as he instead stayed in his trailer zonked out of his mind… it would explain a lot. The Killer Elite combines a paranoid conspiracy thriller w/ martial arts featuring several talented actors in San Francisco yet the end result is a disjointed mess that disintegrates by the final act.
Young and Bo Hopkins as Caan’s cohorts were the highlight of the movie. At least it’s easy to track down the most prominent roles that Burt Young had… not just as Paulie and many were more worthy of viewing than this disappointment.
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