Mike Mendez' Killers

Okay, I'm pretty sure that during the production of "Killers" director Mike Mendez and writer Dave Larsen heavily dreamed of becoming the next David Lynch... or maybe even the next Quentin Tarantino, but in order to achieve this, they should have put a little more thought in their extremely weird and dumb screenplay. Just what the hell is this supposed to be? A hard-boiled thriller, a demented black comedy or perhaps another social mockamentary pointing out to us how easily we glorify violence. The title priority refers to the notorious James brothers; two handsome but relentless maniacs sentenced to death for murdering their parents. They now escaped from their maximum-security cells and travel through California, until they take a middle-class family hostage in the quiet little town of Beatty. However, the Ryan family members aren't as defenseless as they seem. The women, Mrs. Ryan and her two teenage daughters, followed the James brothers' trial on television and developed a huge crush on their perpetrators. But that's still the least of their concerns, as the family also hides far crazier secrets. The sudden plot twist near the middle is extremely retarded, but at least it woke me up again! I already started dozing off since it looked like another pseudo-intellectual portrait about serial killers that seem to have all the knowledge in the world and yet use it to commit crimes. The dialogs are fluent, but they handle about everything you already heard before (in "Natural Born Killers") and some of the unexpected twists are really too crazy for words. There's plenty of violence but I still somehow expected "Killers" to be more grim and sadistic. It's mainly gunfire action and shouting, so I anticipated a little more physical violence, reminiscent to – for example – the torture scenes in "Reservoir Dogs". The plot holes and improbabilities are too numerous to mention, but the acting performances are decent and there's even some on screen sleaze to admire as well. "Killers" is not a total waste of time, but it's severely lacking personality and power to become a cult favorite.

I bought the uncut German Pal DVD of this movie as a blind buy a few months back. Looking back, I'm not sure why I purchased it - I rarely buy purely on instinct. I finally decided to watch it last night and was blown away - what an unexpected treat! I'm not going to give much away as it's one of those movies that's best viewed with little knowledge going in. What starts out as a "Desperate Hours"-style movie soon proves a much more interesting ride.

This scores as my unexpected delight for the year. It's a low-budget gem. Some of the acting is "love it or hate it stuff" - the writer Dave Larsen plays Odessa James as a cross between Kiefer Sutherland and Mickey Rourke and I found some of his dialogue a little unintelligible - but, ultimately, I loved the cheesy charm of this film. It's also great looking - the film's scenes are bathed in a lovely blue light in the early scenes - very stylish.

The DVD set is a 2 disc set but the second disc has only trailers and a German-language only short on it. Still, it's a great looking Disc 1 and worth the purchase price, IMHO.

I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by this film too. I bought it in a bargain store today....£1 and was one of the best pounds I've ever spent. Well worth wasting away an hour or so. Almost gave up at first as one of the characters is a little irritating but I stuck with it. Some of the cinematography is excellent and it became something completely unexpected and fun in a bizarre and twisted way. It's the sort of film that you feel doesn't really know exactly what it wants to be and yet it works either in spite or because of that and as a woman I was worryingly drawn to the two brothers. Even if you don't find this film in a bargain bin somewhere it would still be worth spending a few pounds on.

I know a guy who came to me and told me that he had a movie he claimed to be very good. If I liked Natural Born Killers and From Dusk Till Dawn, I will love this movie. He couldn't have been more wrong. In two words, it sucked. But to use more words than that, I will say that the movie had a very funny story, it was a very nice little story concerning a couple guys who just broke out of jail and take cover in a nice suburban household. It seems dark and gloomy at first, but 50 minutes later we are revealed to a nice array of insanity. The movie actually fools you into liking it by the end. The point is, the dialogue takes more centerstage than it should and half the time, you dont even know whats going on. Nice story, bad movie. No wonder I have never heard of it before.

Having seen "The Convent" years earlier, i was expecting a much more juevenile film than the one i got. What i got was a well filmed movie with much more sophisticated dialogue and plot devices than "The Convent", but still a movie plagued with spotty acting and a B movie atmosphere.

The main thing to appreciate here is the dialogue. Like most things in a Mendez film, its quality fluctuates, but said dialogue is consistently quite good in this film, and the police shop-talk seems to have been pretty well researched, as well.

The main thing this movie is, is fun. I'm personally one of those cinephiles willing to forgive the bad elements of a film in favor of the overall vision and scope of the film. However, while i enjoyed "Real Killers" overall, i must say that the social criticisms and commentaries felt second-hand and that the film has no real "message" as far as I'm concerned, but more mimed and aped morals from movies the director admires. However, the story istelf is whats most prevalent in the movie, with the "pithy" dialogue an underpinning for the whole production.

Not a terrible film, not a brilliant film. "Real Killers" is some good B-movie fare suitable for fans of this type of genre.

M.