Destructor

I love this director. First, he gave us Island of Death, an utterly outrageous and hilarious piece of video nasty trash. Then, after thinking that was the only film he'd ever made, I found myself watching Nightmare at Noon, a Crazies style film with plenty of action and hoots. Now, I've sat through Hired to Kill, and although it's not as good as those two films, it still has plenty of daftness to keep my attention.

Brian Thompson is one of those secret service types hired to infiltrate a despotic country and overthrow dictator Oliver Reed, but not just that, he's got to do it posing as a gay fashion designer with an entourage of special forces beauties posing as models. So it's kind of like the dirty dozen remade by Vogue magazine, including the obligatory training scene, and the obligatory fashion model shoot. No wonder Oliver Reed looks perplexed (and a little bit toasted in a couple of scenes).

This is all pretty fun stuff, but there's a lack of action for the first hour or so. Still, there's the standout scene where Oliver Reed checks whether or not Thompson is actually gay or not which had me in stitches. I'm not even sure Reed was expecting to be kissed by Thompson because his surprise seems pretty genuine. Great stuff.

I love these old action movies with bad actors and all the cliches, they're simply just so funny. If you liked showdown in little tokyo or any of Arnolds action movies, then you'll like this :) Too bad this one wasn't shown in cinemas and I had to rent the DVD. So if you have a good sounds system and a thing for old action movies, then GET THIS ONE!!!

When I checked for the first time the IMDB page for HIRED TO KILL I was torn between curiosity and repulsion. Curiosity because it has lots of good looking women, lots of exotic locations and also George Kennedy and Josè Ferrer in the cast. Repulsion because it has a low score and the lead is played by Brian Thompson (who at that time looked like the poor man's version of Sylvester Stallone and Jean Claude Van Damme). However I ended up enjoying it very much and I couldn't believe the bad reputation this movie had for years.

The movie is about mercenary Frank Ryan (Thompson) who is summoned by Agent Thomas (Kennedy) to go to Cyprus and free a revolutionary leader (Ferrer) held hostage by President Bartos (Oliver Reed). At the beginning Frank is reluctant, but in the end he accepts and he has its own plan: he poses as a fashion photographer and lets some women mercenaries pose as his models and after some photoshoots they go to the mission. How they will make it? See the movie.

This movie is nothing special. It has lots of action and some cool sequences here and there. I think that people who lived in the 1990s and who even saw it back then would have lots of nostalgia since there are also some songs of that period.

However, don't expect a masterpiece of the action genre like DIE HARD or POINT BREAK. Just think about it like one of the many B-movies of the genre that were made in a period when they usually went also straight to video that can be enjoyed even by non-fans of the genre.

A fashion photographer (Brian Thompson) and seven models travel to a South American island fortress, ostensibly to do a fashion shoot. In reality, the photographer is a mercenary and their job is to free an imprisoned rebel leader. The director describes it as "Magnificent Seven" with women.

This is really the height of 1990s cheese. It has the sensibility of a 1980s action film, and that is not surprisingly since it was probably filmed in 1989. All the excess and over-the-top things you expect. Brian Thompson may not be Stallone or Schwarzenegger, but he knows what to do in this sort of role. Is he a cheesy actor? Very much... his delivery of lines is pretty rough. Apparently, he was the director's son-in-law at the time, possibly explaining his casting.

Oliver Reed appears, and it has been a few years since he was the big star of "The Brood" or "Curse of the Werewolf" (among his many other achievements). The most notable thing about his role in this film is a very big mustache that makes him almost unrecognizable. The director freely describes him as a "hostile drunk" who abused his wife; he was gentle when sober, but he was rarely sober. Thompson concurs saying, "I never saw Oliver Reed sober."

Besides the excellent 2K restoration, the Arrow Video release includes audio commentary with editor Barry Zetlin (who has a very impressive resume of horror and cult films and talks at length about his career), and brand new interviews with director Nico Mastorakis and star Brian Thompson.

This movie gives the impression that the worst thing anyone ever asked Brian Thompson to do was to try to act. Whether one can pin the credit on screenwriter Fred Perry or, more likely, director Nico Mastorakis, the notion also comes across that the rest of the cast were shoved into small corners where the same holds true for their performances. 'Heavy-handed' is one word we could use to describe the writing and direction; "indelicate" is another. The script includes tawdry and wholly unnecessary sexism, homophobia, and racism, and even the way female characters are written sometimes feels stereotypical and problematic. Meanwhile, even in instances where a slight measure of cleverness is demanded, the movie leaps out of bounds to take a different tack that's simply dubious (watch the scene in which Thompson and George Kennedy's characters speak in code). 'Hired to kill' at least stops short of being fully exploitative, though the small bits of gratuitous nudity are tired, and it otherwise treads a thin line. This isn't altogether terrible, but at its worst, there are times when it seems like it's trying to be.

True, the feature doesn't particularly pretend to be anything it's not, and I think anyone who stumbles upon it will know pretty well what they're in for. If you want an action-adventure romp and don't mind if it's second- or third-tier, this is the movie for you. On the other hand: 'Hired to kill' could have been a piece of purposefully overwrought, deadpan, tongue-in-cheek majesty - some lines and small inclusions are almost brilliant. Instead, even as it's distinctly overcooked at points, it feels like the picture is a little too self-serious for its own good. It's like the film didn't entirely know what it wanted to be, the tone it wanted to strike.

Still, credit where it's due: recognizing the level this title is operating on, it's modestly enjoyable. I love the filming locations, and the production design is fairly solid. The costume design and hair and makeup work are good. Action sequences aren't half bad; stunts are well done, and the effects that primarily include a lot of explosions. Putting aside guidance of the cast, Mastorakis' direction is competent. I question some of the sound effects - did you know bullets make a similar "plop" noise as paintball projectiles when they impact the human body? - but overall the contributions of those behind the scenes are pretty great, and 'Hired to kill' is technically sound.

What it comes down to, I suppose, is that I just wish a tad more mindful care were put into the writing and direction. Find your voice, and dispense with boorish indulgences, and I could even overlook a plot that is satisfactory but less than remarkable. These are the biggest weaknesses of the feature; improve on them and there's still no mistaking that this is hardly a major studio blockbuster, but it would have come off better. All the same, there are worse ways to spend 90 minutes. There's no reason 'Hired to kill' is going to be remembered in the annals of cinema history, and you definitely don't need to go out of your way for it. But for an action flick of this nature it's passably entertaining, so provided that you're not expecting more, then just relax and have fun.