O Rei dos Assassinos

If you seen the movie Accident Man with Scott Adkins, well you gonna watch this and just be baffle how similar the 2 movies are with a bit of The Raid thrown into it. I kept telling myself "this would just be so much better if it was Michael Jai White, Amy Johnston, Ray Park and obviously Scott himself.

Alain Moussi is a very competent martial arts actor, and i enjoyed him in Kickboxer reboots, especially the second, and he is coming from a stuntman background, so it hurt for me to be negative toward this movie as obviously the budget must had been pretty low and im sure they did it with passion.

But i got to call it as it is and i think i am very generous to give it a 6 out of 10 on IMDB and a 3 stars on Letterboxd if only because ultimately i didn't dislike the movie, it was "ok", so ill still give it the yellow heart.

The issue is beside Alain Moussi, most actors in this are not from an on screen martial arts background. Frank Grillo is a good B movie actor, i like him, but don't expect him to pull out amazing fights. They got George St. Pierre, former UFC/MMA champion, and they use him in a ...gun fight? Not fist fight? Why?

Ultimately where the movie really loose points for me is how much the fights are filmed in a way to hide the fact that most of these peoples are really not used to film martial arts. Scenes are dark, flashy lights and fast jump cuts, at times i felt like i was watching a Steven Seagal movie.

There is a few competent fight scenes, but for a movie that is paper thin when it comes to plot and rely simply on this "Raid style" floor of boss fights, you would expect better action.

As i said above, i didn't hate it, i didn't looked at my phone or anything, but i just kept telling myself that for the peoples involved in this, it should had been much better, and ultimately some roles should had been casted differently.

I am someone very easy to please when it comes to action movies, especially Martial Arts movie, so for me it pass on the verge, but i would only "half recommand it" to the die hard fans of the genre. Peoples who seen everything like me and just want something new. But for others who watch a movie once a week or less, there is much better stuff to watch.

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.

"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.

As someone who has hardly watched hitman movies, I would say King of Killers is just borderline watchable (or so-bad-it's-good to some). It bombards viewers with stereotypical plot points that we've had enough of in this genre. Name one and it's most likely in the film. On top of that, many could have guessed the plotline just by the title alone. King of Killers clearly doesn't offer anything innovative nor does it try to revamp the genre. It just wants to look cool. Seeing Frank Grillo play the over-the-top villain was enjoyable, however. Another positive thing about King of Killers is that any movie watched after it would feel 10 times better.