Killers
Cast: Ashton Kutcher, Katherine Heigl, Tom Selleck, Catherine O'Hara, Rob Riggle, Kevin Sussman, Martin Mull, Katheryn Winnick
Rating: (M)
Ashton Kutcher would not be my first pick to play a dashing super-spy but in Killers (Rialto and Hoyts) his slacker persona is the least of it.
Spencer Aimes (Kutcher) is starting to feel jaded in his calling. On assignment in Nice he meets Jen (Katherine Heigl), a careful suburbanite, and her cosy charm seems exotic to him.
In no time flat he has given up his specialist trade, married Jen and retreated to the safety of the suburbs.
Then, for no particular reason, after three years of domestic bliss Spencer's status seems to have been reactivated and an endless gallery of people are out to kill him.
Just as in Knight and Day the concept of the master spy coming up against the modern woman is supposed to be instantly hilarious. Spies are all stand there, hold this, shot that and once upon a time women were meekly supposed to comply.
The new woman is more lippy but scarcely more believable.
She shrieks a bit, calls him out for lying to her, then gets in touch with her own inner spy, becoming a full-fledged accomplice.
The actors involved in this piffle do surprisingly well at animating the silliness, but are undone by a script that makes no sense and is just not funny enough for it not to matter.
Best thing: Tom Selleck's moustache makes a welcome return.
Worst thing: Is there a shortage of joke-writers in Hollywood? This desperately needed some.
See it with: An unholy fetish for pretty-boy Kutcher. Otherwise, don't you know there is a film festival on?
- By Christine Powley
