Killing Season

Have you ever played the game where you thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if Actor X and Actor Y did a movie together?’  It is fun to make fantasy movie pairings and then attempt to create what sort of plot would best envelop the characters.  I don’t know if anyone ever dreamt of the day there would be a film with Robert De Niro and John Travolta in it, but if there is such a person out there they would have been tickled excited the day they heard about the movie Killing Season, which came out this year and can now be found on Netflix.

For those who may not have heard about this film, it came out in limited release back in July and existed in twelve theatres for only one week before being released on video in August.  The film portrays Travolta as a former Serbian soldier who heads to American to seek revenge on De Niro who was a former American soldier.  De Niro’s character, Benjamin, lives a solitary life in the woods and sometimes has a Georgia accent and sometimes does not.  Travolta’s character, Emil, tracks down Benjamin, befriends him, and then hunts him for sport in the battle of two bewildering accents, as Travolta’s Serbian accent reminds me of the over-the-top accents I used to attempt with my friends when I was in grade eight.  Why would he not just hunt him for sport before befriending him, you may ask.  That’s a great question.

To my surprise, I was into the film for the first while, enjoying the pace of it and the attention to the characters, outside of their accents, that is.  However, I also had the feeling that the movie kept showing items in a way that was foreshadowing their use further down the road and I gradually began to become separated from the feel of the movie as it became more and more evident that the directing was being more and more overt about what was to come.  A character’s foot crashing through floorboards would tell me that rotten wood would then be used as a weapon moments later… spoiler alert: I was correct.  The fact that nothing would come as a surprise and that items could not be shown for a significance other than informing the viewer of what was to come took anticipation and suspense from the movie with a rapid pace.

It is a true film of cat and mouse, between two men who were former opposing soldiers, and established momentum shifts that were as consistent as a pendulum on a clock.  It quickly became obvious that one person would gain the upper hand, not dispatch the other, and then have the roles reversed, not once or twice, but time and time again.  The monotony and routine of the continual shifting of roles became tiresome and frustrating.  You would honestly think that these former professional soldiers would begin to learn that when they were in control it would be in their best interest to end it all instead of facing the inevitable fact that the other person would soon have their chance (which they would also piss away).

While the movie was about revenge, it was also about two old soldiers trying to come to terms with the horrors of war and their current identities that had been shaped by it, all of which elevated it past the typical cat and mouse tale.  What this movie was sitting on is a beautiful concept that got hidden behind predictable moments, farcical accents, and bland scenes.  Bookending the film was a decent beginning and conclusion which gave glimpses of the potential that the film carried with it, and I am hoping that in a few years another director blows the dust off of this one and gives it another shot, because there is a gem in here just waiting to be mined by the right person.

Rating – 1.5 out of 4 stars