Mike Mendez' Killers

This is a great example of a movie that has a lot more buried in it than what you see on it's cover. Depending on your inclinations, you'll either love it or hate it when it's twisty-turny bits start to do their thing.

There are some reviews claiming that the acting is very poor. Honestly, they are not far off. The acting is slow, and so is the development. The lines are overly written, portraying a little too much imagination in long-winded passages that are almost poetic in nature. Still, I would say that the lines are delivered with as much sense and effectiveness as the actors could have mustered up. Watch it and ask yourself, "How would I have delivered that line?" and I suspect you will find yourself beginning to agree with the simple candor that the actors used on screen.

Also, in the case of the main protagonists, you start to realize that the excessively verbose mannerisms actually make a certain sense, and even become relevant later on as the characters begin to reveal their more interesting secrets. While the characters seem unreal at first, you start to see why they are the way they are later.

The film's biggest drawbacks are it's poor filming, slow movement, and it's highly unlikely circumstantial timing. What I mean by the timing is that events happen that leave you scratching your head and asking yourself, "Why, when and how did this happen?" The director feels no need to answer these questions, as the film's magic is contained almost entirely in the house where the events occur. The writers felt no need to explain why the world outside kept intruding.

Lastly, the filming is all blue and moody. It's a silly method of filming, I never liked it. Stop using the filters, bring in some dang light and make a movie we can see.

I really feel like I did NOT waste my time on this one. I don't know if I can call it original in any way other than it's incredible and unusual mix of themes, but it was definitely entertaining.

And that's really the point. Entertainment. It's the bottom line of movie making. I recommend this movie, simply because it's so.. bizarre.

I really feel like this is something of a hidden gem. It deserves a redo, a more modern reiteration to work out the bugs.

I saw a midnight premiere of this movie in college and it quickly disappeared, but it stuck in my head long after I forgot the title, and I'm lucky I re-found it. No one in that theater knew what to expect from this movie, and it start out as everyone's worst nightmare: a cheap, clichéd crime drama. A lot of people walked out after the first 20 minutes, but I was determined to stick it through. And I'm really glad I did.

At the twist point in this movie, the horrible clichés and acting and directing of the first half feel like an amazingly underplayed setup to a punchline with actual humor and shock. Imagine "From Dusk till Dawn" if the vampire angle hadn't been completely ruined by over promotion.

It's really rare that a movie seems to be one thing but then turns completely around halfway through into something 10x better, but this is one of those. It used the low expectations and low budget to it's own advantage and turned out a movie I never forgot.

As far as my rating goes, I'm voting on the entertainment value of the movie, and not analyzing each category of the movie as far as cinematography, special effects, dialogs and stuff of the sort might go...

The movie is just a completely amazing and over the top adventure, with outlandish plot twists, cheesy lines and dialogs. The characters are just totally unbelievable and over the top that you can't help loving them and most of the movie just feels like a completely delusional experience, but it's AWESOME! It just grips you to it, and entertains the living crap out of ya! Well, at least it made my night! I'd recommend it to any movie-watcher that just likes having a laugh, with some fun involved.

AVOID if you take films too seriously!

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.

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.