Tueur d'élite

To all the long-faced dimwits bemoaning the decidedly uncontentious tone of this picture, I've three words: Get a life! First off, the "The Killer Elite" is a rip-roaring gasser about the most offbeat assassins to ever walk the earth. Burt Young versus ninjas? James Caan and Robert Duvall serenading CIA safe houses? Where do I sign? Maybe some also bellow on about how watered-down "The Killer Elite" is amongst the Peckinpah pantheon, but I put this to you: how many "PG"-rated pictures include defectors getting their brains blown out, as sanguine life sprays the walls? Not many. Third off, the nihilistic corporate pecking order as portrayed in the film sums up the old "Alfredo Garcia" "no heroes" mentality quite nicely. Mako and Gig "Fred C. Dobbs" Young are there to party, Caan, Duvall, and Young seem to be having the time of their lives, so what are we waiting for? "Let's go bananas."

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.

I have been trying to find 'The Killer Elite' for quite some time. Directed by the legendary Sam Peckinpah in between two of his best and most underrated movies ('Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia' and 'Cross Of Iron'), and re-teaming James Caan and Robert Duvall, co-stars of 'The Godfather', I was sure that this was going to be one of those great lost 70s gems like 'Rolling Thunder' or 'The Yakuza'. Sadly, it isn't. Now I know Peckinpah often suffered studio interference and rarely got to get a movie on screen with his vision uncompromised, so I can only assume this is the case here. Caan, who is always watchable no matter what he is in, plays a CIA operative who is betrayed by his partner, Duvall (who only has a small supporting role to be honest). Wounded and written off by his bosses, he is manipulated into guarding an Asian politician (Mako, best known for the 'Conan' films) who Duvall is trying to assassinate. Caan and his hand-picked team (Peckinpah regular Bo Hopkins, and Burt Young of 'Rocky' fame) carry out there task in good faith until it becomes increasingly obvious that they are being used. Peckinpah deals with his frequent themes of loyalty and honour, and there is some characteristic bloody action sequences, but frankly the script leaves a lot to be desired, the plot sometimes wanders off track, and some golden opportunities are missed. 'The Killer Elite' reeks of compromise and therefore fails to completely satisfy. But hey, even neutered Peckinpah is still Peckinpah, and just about everything he directed wipes the floor with most of Hollywood's current lame output, so I still say give this one a try. For all its flaws it still stars James Caan, one of the most underrated actors of his generation, and even that in itself is enough to keep me watching.

By the mid-1970s, the career of director Sam Peckinpah had basically hit the skids. He had seen one more film of his (PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID) butchered by a studio (MGM) in 1973; then, in 1974, his most overtly personal film, the admittedly ghoulish-sounding BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA, was roundly trashed by audiences and critics alike. And on top of that, the excesses that had been plaguing him on and off for years were starting to dominate his life. Yet through all of this, he somehow managed to pull off the good when he was sober. A case in point was the action thriller THE KILLER ELITE, released near the end of 1975.

In this film, James Caan portrays an employee for a CIA-sponsored offshoot group called ComTeg (Communications Integrity) who, in protecting a German political figure (Helmut Dantine), is maliciously wounded by his partner (Robert Duvall) in the leg and arm. Though his superiors in ComTeg (Arthur Hill; Gig Young) tell him that those injuries are so severe that he may never be able to walk fully again, Caan vows to get back into the game, exposing himself to strenuous rehabilitation and martial arts exercises. When Hill gives him the chance, via protecting a Japanese politician (Mako) until he can be gotten out of the country, Caan immediately grabs onto it, especially with the fringe benefit of knowing Duvall has resurfaced and is gunning for Mako on his own. The whole operation turns out to be part of an internecine battle of wills inside ComTeg between their two superiors, first resulting in a fatal confrontation at the Bethlehem Steel shipyard, and then a high-energy showdown aboard a mothballed World War II vessel in Suisun Bay involving Japanese kung-fu masters.

It is easy to simply dismiss THE KILLER ELITE (which, however, shouldn't be confused with the similarly-titled, but unrelated and much more violent, 2011 film of the same name) as lesser Peckinpah, but he should still be given credit for having taken a strictly commercial property (much like his big 1972 hit THE GETAWAY), and turning it into a solid action film with some bursts of sardonic humor, plus points being made about the dirty business of the CIA at a time when the agency was being battered in the press for its foreign shenanigans and domestic spying, plus its role in covering up Watergate. He would return to this theme in his last film, 1983's THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND.

Under Peckinpah's direction, both Caan and Duvall, who had appeared together before in THE GODFATHER, do solid work as the two friends set up against one another; and Hill and Gig Young (the latter of whom made for a dispassionate killer in ALFREDO GARCIA) are equally good in their bureaucratic roles. Burt Young and Bo Hopkins do good solid turns as Caan's two partners in the protection of Mako's ambitious Oriental political figure. As is typical with Peckinpah, the action scenes are shot and edited in that characteristic Peckinpah style; and the on-location cinematography by Philip Lathrop, whose credits include 1965's THE CINCINNATI KID (from which Peckinpah was unceremoniously fired), is also superb. And finally, Jerry Fielding, working with Peckinpah one final time, comes up with another iconoclastic music score that combines jazz, dissonance, and Far Eastern music elements.

The end result may not have been "classic Peckinpah" (it is certainly less bloody than THE WILD BUNCH, STRAW DOGS, or ALFREDO GARCIA), but THE KILLER ELITE is still far superior to most of the ultra-violent action flicks that would follow in Peckinpah's wake.

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.