King of Killers

This movie proves that making a movie "just like John Wick" is as easy as riding a bicycle.

Except the bicycle has no wheels. The pedals are bent. The bike is on fire. You're on fire. The world is on fire.

This movie should be shown in every film school on Hollywood as a good example why one should NEVER cast themselves in a key role in a film they both wrote and directed. You are going to end up saying some of the dumbest lines ever written in all seriousness while the audience kills themselves laughing.

We watched this with our son and his fellow friends with LA Sheriffs Department and it ended up, not surprising, as a drinking game. One sip every time they did something laughably stupid in the movie and I think they were all looped by about the first hour. We were hoping it would get better near the end. No, it got worse.

My favorite scene was when they assassins were all hit in the chest with a laser dot, and - like every stupid, low budget action movie ever made - they all looked down.

In real life it would have been easy to track the progress of every killer by all the live ammunition they left lying on the ground. A shotgun was pumped FIVE times before it was shot once ... TWICE in the film. The magic Mossberg with the four-round magazine that was fired a total of 32 rounds without reloading. The visual effect muzzle flashes that were so low rent, they didn't even bother lining them up with the actual muzzle or differentiate the shape with the direction the gun was pointed. The plastic guns from the local dollar store where they didn't even try to hide the BB gun barrel.

I don't know where this movie was made but it was pretty obvious to all of us that they couldn't afford a technical advisor and they hired an armorer who's only qualification must be that he watched the Simpsons episode where Homer joins the NRA.

Read all the reviews here that report actors taking themselves WAY too serious, a really bad script, awful direction and cartoon-like actions. Take heart. You were warned.

Mind you, we watched it until the end. Thankfully, we had enough places for our son and his friends to sleep because none of them could drive home after the "King" of drinking games in watching for stupidity in scenes.

Producer, writer, director and co-star Kevin Grevioux makes his directorial debut with this film, and he did a better job with that, than using his writing experience to come up with a better screenplay. There's some decent action sequences, but sadly, most are overshadowed by Grevioux's horrible cinematography choices. I don't mind bold colors and high contrast to make a film feel animated in a comic book sort of way, but when you dial down the brightness, all a viewer sees are paint color splashes amongst shadowy backgrounds. Even the daylight scenes were too dark. This is amateur-hour filmmaking and makes for a frustrating viewer experience. Then you have his screenplay which is a knock-off of every assassin movie ever made, that was predictable, convoluted, cliched and generic. The normally comfortable 92 min runtime felt never ending with unnecessary sub-plots and ridiculous side-characters. Aside from the decent twist and best action parts towards the ending, the rest of the main narrative was repetitive, exhausting, unimaginative and dull. It's a generous 4/10 all going to Grillo's excellent and best performance of all the characters, albeit he deserves to be in much better films instead of these bottom bin B-films.

Hitman Marcus Garan (Alain Moussi) gets recruited to join the best assassins in the world on a job. It is revealed that their target is the most elusive and yet unseen assassin Jorg Drakos (Frank Grillo). Then their employer reveals that he is Jorg Drakos and he intends to prove that he is the best.

The concept is actually kind of fun. Whatever potential it has is lost with really bland filmmaking. It's all rather boring. There is some fighting, some gun play, and some action. Everything in between is a lot of nothingness. The acting is poor. The writing is bland. It is a bad B-movie action thriller.

The movie is 1 and a half hour, and it only starts to get going around the hour mark.. with too much preamble that isn't worth the wait.

But if you enjoy scarce "stock" cinematic shots of cities, with vibrant sun-showered colors and clarity that don't match the rest of the movie.. you might take something out of it. Otherwise, prepare yourselves for incredibly awful and long-winded villain dialogue, obscured dull action, bad CGI squibs, generic sound mixing and crappy editing (particularly the 90s TV transitions), a charmless band of boring assassins and an unsatisfying dumb ending.

The premise of an Assassin's tournament could have been fun if done well.. but by defining a main character with a tragic backstory that pushes him forward makes for bad storytelling in such context. Not to mention their plans for a sequel that is probably not happening! Not to say that the story going forward wouldn't be enticing at all.

Too cheap in all departments, can't recommend anyone waste their time.

"So the king does bleed."

King of Killers is directed by Kevin Grevioux in his directorial debut and stars Alain Moussi, Marie Avgeropoulous, Georges St Pierre, Frank Grillo and Stephen Dorff.

Shot in Canada back in early 2022 King Of Killers is the directorial debut of Kevin Grevioux who is mostly well known for being a producer on stuff like I Frankenstein and the Underworld movies with Kate Bekinsdale. Adapted from the comic book of the same name Marcus Garan's (Alain Moussi) worlds combine where his assassin life mixes with his personal which leads to his wife getting killed. Now left as a single father to a daughter who is having medical issues Marcus with nothing left to lose decides to take a 10 million dollar job to take out Drakos (Frank Grillo) who has the title of "king of killers."

This is a very basic assassin movie and unfortunately Kevin Grevioux as writer, director and an actor here doesn't necessarily excel at any of his jobs. For an action assassin movie this is kind of boring with a lot of scenes of people just sitting and standing around talking instead of you know fighting. This also is very predictable. Gang of killers try to take out the best and they all get killed one by one until suprise suprise it's only Alain Moussi and Frank Grillo in the end.

Oh and if you thought this movie dropped the "who killed my wife" revenge plot it comes back at the tail end of this. If you were wondering why Stephen Dorff signed up for this when he only has 5 minutes of screentime that were likely phoned in from his hotel room this movie gives you an answer at the end and sets up a sequel that sounds much more interesting and promising than what we got here. Certainly a watchable B movie that is elevated by Frank Grillo but whether the sequel set up at the end of this will ever see the light of day is another question all together.