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Kill List

Country: united_kingdom

Year: 2012

Running time: 95

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1788391/

Thom says:  “This is the final TIFF 2011 film that I review, excepting others I will most likely see after this date. Quite a few are already playing in theaters including LE HAVRE, THE DESCENDANTS, MONEY PIT, & others. Wheatley was the director of last year’s fantastic DOWN TERRACE (one of my TOP 10 films for 2010) about a low-life family of gangsters. KILL LIST, while slightly in the same category goes much further, really to the point of being one of the most disturbing films I’ve ever seen in my life. I literally had chills walking out of the theatre late at night and was scared walking back to my bed & breakfast. While the film ‘tries’ to humanize the reprobates that are the protagonists it ends up presenting people that are far worse, if at all possible. Jay & Sam are two despicable hit men that haven’t worked for a while and are considering disentangling themselves from the dirty business. Jay’s a family man who has dinner parties, argues with his wife, has make-up sex, plays with his son, talks with his partner (you get it, just like everyone else) His partner Sam has started dating a new girl, with dubious background. They get a call to do a few last jobs and set off on a vile, repugnant, disgustingly violent trip that is definitely not for the faint of heart. If violent images upset you please avoid this film. And then Wheatley goes one step further as stranger and stranger things start happening until finally we come across characters that totally redefine evil and send the film into new territory that you never imagined existing. The film is a classic of horror. 5 cats

“Seen at TIFF 2011”

 

Jason says: “Movies like KILL LIST are relatively rare; while there are few individual things in the movie that someone buying a ticket for such a movie hasn’t seen before, the combination of ingredients is unusual. And not just in what’s combined, the way they are put together is sometimes even more peculiar. Considering how frequently rote the hitman drama genre can be, different is a very good thing.

“The assassin in question is Jay (Neil Maskell), who still feels like he needs to recover mentally and physically from a botched job in Kiev eight months ago. This extended ‘recovery’ – which includes a fair amount of drinking and pills – is putting a tremendous strain on his marriage to Shel (MyAnna Buring), leading to some ugly fights in front of their son Sam (Harry Simpson). So maybe, when Jay’s partner Gal (Michael Smiley) and his new girlfriend Fiona (Emma Fryer) come for a dinner party, it’s time to get back out there. So they meet a new client, who gives them a list of three people – but there’s something very strange going on from the start.

“KILL LIST is the new movie by Ben Wheatley, last seen on the festival circuit with DOWN TERRACE and it’s immediately clear that it shares a lot of DNA with that movie. Both sit squarely in the Venn Diagram intersection between ‘crime’ and ‘yelling family’ movies, with what seems like a decided slant toward the latter at first. And as a portrait of a volatile marriage and family, it’s pretty fantastic. Wheately and company spend the first third of the picture making it very difficult to form a simple opinion on Jay’s and Shel’s relationship, switching between caustic screaming matches and quiet moments of support in such a way as to keep the audience from getting too comfortable. The eruptions and deflations happen fast, but this seems perfectly keeping with who these two are, both in general and at this specific point.

“That’s so tumultuous and emotionally nerve-wracking that going off to kill people for money seems like a bit of a respite, although the filmmakers are soon cranking the mystery and discomfort up there, too. The focus here is on Jay and Gal; their relationship is less stressful than that between Jay and Shel, but there’s just enough friction there to get across that Jay’s marriage is not the only thing exerting pressure on him. Mostly, though, it’s about the plot coming to the fore, and the tone is handled very well – Jay and Gal are not presented as heroes, villains, or coolly straddling the line.

“Neil Maskell is, naturally, a big part of why both those parts work. In the span of a few minutes – and occasionally in the same scene – he’ll give us Jay as a devoted softie of a dad and a fountain of rage that threatens to destroy everything around him, and he manages it in a way that never implies that there’s two Jays, but one man whose strong emotions are potentially both strength and undoing (it’s impressive to see how these bits of contrary nature later combine into something cooler and scarier). MyAnna Buring and Michael Smiley each impress as different kind of partners: Smiley’s Gal is Jay’s opposite, temperamentally, able to become calmer when Jay is threatening to lose it, and Smiley draws the right combination of middle-aged experience and the casual cool of the as-yet-unattached. Shel, meanwhile, is too much like Jay; what sets one off will also anger the other, leading them to feed on each other’s fury. Buring is actually pretty great as the lioness of the picture, more practical than her male counterparts in the way movie mothers often are but fierce in ways that have nothing to do with maternal instinct.

“Everything is just fantastic until the end, which quite honestly is also impressive: It’s clever and creative, quite surprising for those who have managed to avoid reading about it while still being what the first two acts have undeniably been building toward. Still, I found it a little frustrating in a couple of ways. One of them is quite possibly all on me, in that I suspect that an English audience is less likely to need the explanation this American wants. The same issue is true in miniature, as well; there’s a ‘gotcha!’ moment that I’m not sure is better motivated than ‘this would make a great gotcha! moment.’

“I suspect others are going to have different, much larger issues with the finale. I think that even they will admire the ambition Wheatley and his collaborators show, though – this is a genre movie that expects a lot of its audience but gives an equal amount back. 4 1/4 cats 

“Seen 3 March 2012 in the Brattle Theatre (first-run/IFFBoston Presents, 35mm)”

 

Kill List

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