The Killer Elite

I was drawn to The Killer Elite by a still of James Caan brandishing a walking stick at a ninja; a crippled Caan versus ninjas could surely only mean fun, especially with Sam Peckinpah behind the camera. Sadly, the scene isn't anywhere near as bad-ass as it sounds on paper, and to get there we have endure an awful lot of sluggish exposition that will most likely disappoint the majority of the director's fans.

The film opens explosively enough, with Mike Locken (Caan) and George Hansen (Robert Duvall) completing a job for ComTeg, a private agency contracted by the C.I.A. to handle work of a more 'sensitive' nature. Locken and Hansen, friends as well as colleagues, are then tasked with protecting a defector, but things take an unexpected turn when Hansen, who has been bought out by a rival group, executes their ward and then turns his gun on Locken, shooting him in the arm and leg.

Critically wounded, Locken is rushed to hospital and undergoes emergency surgery followed by months of intensive physiotherapy. Against all odds, Locken recuperates to the point where he is once again able to work, driven by the idea of taking revenge on his old buddy Hansen.

With Locken's gradual rehabilitation taking up the bulk of the movie, The Killer Elite is remarkably devoid of the brutal violence and slow-motion bloodshed that one associates with Peckinpah, with even a machine gun shootout in a crowded street resulting in only one dead body. Worse still, the ninja showdown that had first attracted my attention comes right at the end of the film and consists of uninspired and poorly choreographed fight action featuring some of the most inept ninjas imaginable.

Apparently, the film was made by Peckinpah while he was experiencing the new-found pleasures of cocaine, which goes a long way to explain why it is such a mess.

Here's a Peckinpah movie that starts out really good but falls apart in the last third. It's a story about high-level contract killers and mercenaries hired out in secret by the CIA. The story investigates the friendship between Mike Locken (James Caan) and George Hansen (Robert Duvall), two of the high-class mercenaries working to protect VIPs and radical international diplomats.

The early character development is good, the dialog and accents are all pretty enjoyable on the ears, the camaraderie between the mercenaries is fun to watch (you don't see chemistry like this in action movies anymore!) and the action scenes -- as expected of Peckinpah -- are intense and well thought-out.

There is a considerable amount of hand-to-hand combat on display here. Some of the dojo scenes with Karate/Judo stuff are not bad, but not totally amazing either. It's cool that Peckinpah wanted to include this stuff, but why would high level secret operatives train in Gendai (modern, sportified, public, organized) Japanese martial arts? I thought that was pretty hokey.

And then we have the real problem: later in the film the bad guys are a bunch of ninjas. Ninjas, huh? I understand that the movie is kinda tongue-in-cheek and is about unrealistically tough contract killers and so forth, but the cheesy ninja costumes and the poorly choreographed fight scenes with them (not to mention the abstract and borderline offensive duel regarding "honor") instantly date this movie and make it something of a novelty.

Peckinpah had serious substance abuse problems at this point and maybe that's what causes the weird pacing. Had this movie been shorter and ended at the end of the second third with a more concise message, it would've been pretty solid. It also could've developed some of the supporting characters more than it did.

Still, there are some pretty good things to be found here. Really good action scenes, some memorable characters and dialog, and some decent commentary on corrupt power-players who run politics and business. It's just too bad everyone involved seems to be on autopilot.

Killer Elite, The (1975)

** (out of 4)

Disappointing thriller from Sam Peckinpah has much of the director's style but very little else. In the film, Mike (James Caan) and George (Robert Duvall) are friends working for the same secret group of spies. While on a mission George decides to take a pay-out so he shoots the person they're supposed to be guarding and he also shoots Mike putting him out of commission. As you'd expect, it doesn't take too long for both men to be facing each other down again. THE KILLER ELITE is a pretty much forgotten film by the director and it's easy to see why as there's very little entertainment to be had here. The most disappointing thing is that the director was given a pretty strong cast to work with but in the end the story is just too weak and moves way too slow to be very entertaining. I will say that the film starts off at a pretty good pace with the introduction of the two lead characters followed by a hilarious joke involving Mike going to bed with a certain woman and George "knowing" something about her. The big double-cross was also stylishly done and of course it features a head being shot up in that Peckinpah slow-motion that you'd expect. From this point on the movie just tries to be too smart for its own good as there are several double-crosses that take place but after a while you just really grow tired of how ridiculous the film is getting so you just tune out and wait for the ending. Again, if you're a Peckinpah junkie then you'll be happy to know that there are several bits from the director including all the slow-motion action scenes. Each time someone dies they do it in slow motion and there's no doubt that the director, even at this stage of his career, knew how to stage an action scene. Both Caan and Duvall are in fine form and their chemistry together makes one wish that they were together more often. The before mentioned joke in the car works perfectly as the actors really make you seem as they're friends. The supporting cast includes familiar faces like Mako, Bo Hopkins, Arthur Hill, Burt Young and Gig Young. THE KILLER ELITE runs just over two-hours and sadly most of this time the viewer is just bored and wishing it would end. There simply aren't enough good moments to make the film worth viewing to anyone outside those Peckinpah fans.

Peckinpah's 1975 thriller is infuriatingly uneven. It is also one of his most interesting films, throwing the director's preoccupations into relief. It was made between the gothic thriller Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia (1974), and his last great film, Cross Of Iron (1977). As the critic Pauline Kael noted, it was a way of proving himself alive to the Hollywood establishment, a "transparent disguise for... determination to show Hollywood that he's not dead yet... that, despite the tabloid views of him, frail and falling down drunk, he's got the will to make great movies." It's no accident that this is a film in which the director stresses his auteurism with more than the usual self-consciousness (the words 'directed by' and 'Sam Peckinpah' are separated by an emphatic crosscut in the opening credits). Neither that it is one in which the theme of rehabilitation – or, more specifically, recuperation - dominates the dramatic matter in hand, giving the narrative a lopsidedness from which it never really recovers.

Kung Fu plot notwithstanding, at the centre of The Killer Elite is the relationship between Locken (James Caan) and Hansen (Robert Duvall). The shifting balance between two men, who find themselves on opposite sides of the law, recall similar relationships in Ride The High Country (1962), between Steve Judd and Gil Westrum, or in The Wild Bunch (1969), between Pike Bishop and Deke Thornton. "I can't figure why he didn't put the third one in my head," says Locken, brooding in hospital. "He's your buddy," is the characteristic reply. Locken and Hansen may travel further apart than the other examples of broken camaraderie in Peckinpah's work, but their mutual respect remains intact to the end. In the shoot out at the darkened quay, despite his thirst for revenge, Locken walks away from his former partner in disgust and he's not responsible for the final bullet.

The relationship between the two men is what focuses Locken's life and gives his actions perspective. Once his buddy is dead, his character loses all motivation, and then the movie its soul. What's left is a ramshackle kung fu killer plot, which any competent straight-to-video producer could have scribbled down on the back of an envelope. Peckinpah's other films frequently end when the central partnership was irrevocably dissolved. For all of its martial pyrotechnics, The Killer Elite just goes on too long.

The most successful part of the film is contained within the opening third. The first operation, Hansen's initial betrayal (which occurs in a world of surveillance that anticipates The Osterman Weekend, 1983), and the mechanics of Locken's physical reconstruction are, by turn, engrossing. It's a time of development and learning for Locken. From the casual sex of the opening the injured agent has to adjust, restrain his bitterness ("I'll just limp out of here"), and establishes a more permanent relationship with his nurse while on the mend. From embracing a broad, Locken ends up clutching a bedpan, then grasps at any chance to re-establish himself as whole. Peckinpah found delineating the mending processes so engrossing that the belated introduction of Negato Toku (Tak Kubota) as "Godfather of all the ninja assassins," and then Locken's fortuitous assignment to protect Yuen Cheung (Mako) against death within the USA are like dramatic afterthoughts, tellingly summarised in conversation over the airport fight.

These airport scenes, however expertly cut together by the director, are perhaps amongst the most gratuitous scenes of violence in his oeuvre. The fighting is dwelt on purely as a means to patch over a glaring narrative fault line, carrying along some clumsy verbal exposition. It has none of the catharsis, or brutal poetry, familiar from the director's other films. Locken's recuperation has proved a distraction. After his hospital a scene, the belated 'catching up' scene feels at best rushed, at worst intrusive. Worse, we sense Peckinpah is just not as emotionally engaged with martial arts as he is with the matter of the Old West. (A feeling underlined when Locken watches the final ninja swordfight with calculated disinterest, calmly betting on the result.) An obvious sop to those fans who wanted more of the action exemplified in Clouse's Enter The Dragon of two years previously, the kung fu in Peckinpah's film is vigorous, filmed with style, but remains peculiarly unconvincing. Strip away the martial arts and what remains is far more interesting and consistent with Peckinpah's personal philosophy. As in his other films there is a theme running through The Killer Elite, one of honour and the inexorable passing of the old ways. One thinks of the mothballed fleet the scene of the final confrontation, a veritable graveyard of former pride and glory. "You've just been retired Mike, enjoy it," says Hansen after crippling Locken. "You just retired, Cap," echoes Locken in irony, when addressing his traitorous superior at the end. In The Killer Elite, a new order is recognised: that of power systems, none of which care about civilians, or integrity - a recognition enunciated rather surprisingly by the shambling Miller (a scruffy Bo Hopkins). Cap Collins (Arthur Hill) had earlier put these changes more succinctly: "Would you believe that heroism has become old fashioned?" So half-baked and ludicrous is the action plot that much of the film's other pleasure comes from incidentals. The initial friendship between Locken and Hansen for instance, or Miller's girlfriend calling everyone 'Mr Davies'; the editing of the explosive opening sequence; or the bomb-under-the-car scene, ending with the distant explosion (pure comic 'business' rare in Peckinpah); Caan's sensitive performance. Allied to this is Jerry Fielding's score, an outstanding contribution from a composer who worked with the director on several occasions, as well as the acting in support from Peckinpah regulars like Hopkins. In short, The Killer Elite is something of curate's egg, only good in parts but, with all its unsatisfactory elements, still essential viewing for admirers of this director.

The Killer Elite 1975 by all accounts, a legendary fiasco of a production, the director drunk most of the time and everyone else snow blind. This is the film where (allegedly) a crew member introduced Sam Peckinpah to cocaine, which didn't seem to help "Bloody Sam's" moody irascibility. James Caan and Robert Duvall give bizarre performances, manic and weird (cocaine is a hell of a drug) and even Burt Young looks glassy-eyed and ringy. The resurrection of the body is the theme. Caan's collapse in a restaurant is briskly cut for maximum shame and helplessness, followed by "Cleft chins and true hearts are out." Then it is mid-70s martial arts on the road to rehabilitation and revenge. After reinstatement, Caan announces, "I'm gonna need some things." and Arthur Hiller says, "Get em," and hands over a huge wad of cash. Burt Young and Bo Hopkins have Caan's back: "One is retired, the other is crazy." Hopkins makes his first appearance shooting skeet with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background, "The Poet of Manic Depressives" with his shy smile and aw shucks charm, surely the stand-in for Peckinpah: "I didn't think your company would hire me." Mako gets to sword fight at the end. Absurd. The surprise is how watchable it is.