Cheap The Killer Elite (DVD) (James Caan, Robert Duvall) (Sam Peckinpah) Price

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Customer Reviews of The Killer Elite

The Killer Elite Saved By Cast and Director
The Killer Elite is a low key action movie with a little martial arts mixed in. Directed by Sam Pekinpah, it boasts a great cast including James Caan, Robert Duvall, Gig Young, Mako, Bo Hopkins, and Burt Young. There are a couple of hilarious moments, but the movie is a little dated compared to today's action movies. Meaning the action is far and few between. The story is about two CIA operatives (James Caan as Mike Locken and Robert Duvall as George Hansen) pitted against each other. Duvall's character betrays the CIA and at the same time cripples Caan's character. Caan fights his way back to a CIA position and is reassigned to protect an important foreign dignitary and recruits old pals for his task force. These characters provide somewhat of comic relief (Burt Young and Bo Hopkins). Pekinpah's direction is great despite the weak script and ample action, but somehow one feels that there should have been more to show with such a great cast.

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THE KILLER ELITE
A warped genius of a director sleepwalks this half decent action thriller. You can tell Peckinpah had no enthusiasm making this film, it still boasts some good cheographed action scenes.
For example a great sequence of a botched assaination attempt, mixed with some slow motion martial arts. James Caan and Robert Duval are playing there roles purely for laughs. Watchable but no Straw Dogs.

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Easily one of the worst movies ever
If you ever wonder why James Caan, despite being an amazing actor, hasn't had that great a career, this meltdown is a great place to start. Keeping with that theme, Robert Duvall's seems to have survived because he's only actually in about four scenes in the entire movie. I have to hand it to whoever wrote the great blurb on the back of the DVD, because the dubious title alone makes it easy to take a pass on it.

Pass I should have done. Really, the whole idea of this was bad to begin with. The opening credits encompass the guys placing a bomb with children playing in the background, and yet when the thing goes off, the building is actually in a light industrial area with no children around to speak of. Very weird. The purpose of blowing the place seems to be to spirit away some defector with a bad accent, which doesn't make any sense either. The first ten minutes the sound was really badly mixed, so it was hard to tell what they were saying . . . and it got worse from there. Caan gets shot up, then obligatory "invalid recovery" sequence begins, through which I fast-forwarded zestfully. And then I gave up for a couple of days, never intending to finish it, but one gets bored.

Protecting some generically Asian guy was the focus of the rest of the plot, which allowed for some generic ninjas to be introduced into the mix. The ludicrous scenes of ninjas stupidly charging into Uzi fire ensues after a lot of FAST-PACED, BREAK-NECK (yeah right) car chasing and lots of conversation. The heroes even start laughing at the stupidity it at one part, along with the audience.

Bad editing, direction, script, acting, concept, music, etc. Many reasons why nobody's ever hear of it. I wish my local video store would be more discriminating in their selection. This is easily one of the worst movies I've ever seen. Avoid.