Killing Season

For starters, the movie gets absolutely everything wrong about events of the Bosnian war, but since such ignorance is expected from Hollywood, there is no reason to hold it against this particular title.

The premise of the movie is good, the basic story is decent, but the script could have been better written, the two main characters' stories never get satisfyingly developed. If this was directed by John McTiernan as originally planned, this would have been a great movie. Sadly, instead we got the guy who did Daredevil and he once again delivered a bland, uninspiring product. Acting is OK, Travolta did his best to hold a consistent accent (it was the wrong accent, but hey!) throughout the movie, while DeNiro looked more like he was only concerned with the paycheck.

All in all, the movie is not terrible, I guess it wouldn't kill you to watch it if you have nothing better to do for an hour and a half. The sad part is that this could have been a much, much better movie, perhaps even a classic.

First of all this review focuses on the cinematography and acting of this movie and not its historical accuracy, I am not a judge of that. All I'm going to say is that history has many sides.

Killing Season brings to the big screen the first collaboration of two great actors, Robert De Niro and John Travolta. Both of the actors bring mediocre performances and are basically the main reason that this movie is quite appealing. Travolta's Serbian accent, I thought, was decent enough and quite believable. De Niro's performance was a bit rushed, like he did this movie as a favour for someone, or simply for money.

Although overly cheesy and quite violent this film is perfect for thrill seekers who like to see good actors play roles that do not suit them at all. The plot is simple and does not complicate things although I do believe that the flashback scenes were useless to the portrayal of the story. The only thing need said about the plot is that it is a simple "revenge seeking" story.

To summarize, this movie is an adventurous story with beautiful scenery and intense action scenes that appeals for both action and thrill seeking audiences but also to more critically thinking audiences that focus on exaggerated acting performances. Overall I give this movie a well deserved 6/10.

I was expecting to despise this movie. I only watched it because I was in the mood to see a bad De Niro movie, so the one where he's opposite Travolta playing a Serbian seemed to fit the criteria perfectly. But I was actually on board for the first 15 or so minutes of Killing Season. De Niro's character is off in a cabin isolated from his family and still recovering from the effects the Bosnian war had on him however many years ago, and Travolta's character is out for vengeance because he was left for dead in the same war on the opposing side. It's a simple enough premise. And there's one interesting scene where De Niro and Travolta are drinking and sharing war stories where you actually feel some tension but mutual respect building between them. Kind of like Pacino and De Niro in Heat (a blasphemous comparison but it's the first thing that came to mind). Anyway, I wanted more of that.

But as soon as that's over, the movie turns into a cat-and-mouse game between the two of them that consists of one of them getting captured and tortured, then they somehow escape and the chase continues until the other guy gets captured and tortured, then they somehow escape and the cycle continues. It's just dumb and predictable. And let's talk about the accents for a minute. Travolta doesn't even have a bad accent. Mind you I don't know how authentic of a Serbian accent it is, but the accent itself is convincing enough. The problem is that he uses the same intonation for everything he says. At one point he's literally shot in the f*cking face and the next minute he's talking in exactly the same tone as before. And De Niro does this southern accent that drifts in and out, and you can tell he's just there for a paycheck because he's not even trying to pull it off convincingly. Hell it was more believable in Machete. And the special effects, holy god they're awful. They'll randomly cut to a close up of a wound and it just looks terrible. It's gratuitous, and I don't mind gratuity all that much but when you can clearly tell something is CGI, there's no excuse for that to make it in the final cut. It's unnecessary, it looks like crap, get it out of there.

So yeah, I ended up disliking the movie but not for the reasons I was expecting. Travolta's accent wasn't the worst part of the movie like I thought it'd be. The story was quite interesting but it gets resolved in the most half-assed way, like there's absolutely no pathos when there so easily could have been seeing as how it's about two opposing war vets encountering each other after all this time. I mean, it's not a terrible movie. It really isn't. De Niro has had much worse, so has Travolta. But there are glimpses of potential all over this movie that get squandered in the dumbest possible ways, and that itself makes Killing Season a frustrating watch.

Apart from the angry folks from the countries that the movie depicts, that gave 1/10 to this movie, it's a nice movie overall.

It's not a masterpiece and it's actually right on the path of the movies that De Niro has been doing for the past few years. Despite it not being great, I really liked it for what it is. It's supposed to be a thriller with two war veterans and it's just that. It's nothing ingenious but it's a totally decent movie that would be a 6.5 in my book.

Travolta was good, De Niro is always great cause I adore him as an actor! The action was as much as I wanted, the scenes of the fighting were really realistic and kept me at the edge of my seat. Even this back and forth thing that one was freed and the other was freed and so on and so forth, was nicely done and was not tiring.

It's a nice rental for a relaxed week night, with some pop corn or a pizza, if you can handle eating with bloody scenes!

Just a short comment for all the people complaining about the history facts.

There wasn't a Serbian Army? true that.. but there where: Arkanovi Tigrovi (Srpska dobrovoljacka garda), Knindze, Crvene beretke, Skorpioni, Seseljevi dobrovoljci, Dusan silni, Beli orlovi (Seseljevci, Osvetnici, Cetnici), Srpski sokolovi, Siltovi and many many more.. and they where not Japanese or chineese or Canadian people. It is to hard to understand to foreign ppl and learn all of them.. so they can say just "serbian army", even officially it wasn't their name.

Please look at the big picture and do not stick to these 2 words.

Travolta's Serbian slang is not perfect but he is acting good. I am sure Serbian actors don't speak perfect English to.

If is a movie. Not the greatest one but still a movie and no one said it is based on a true story.