King of Killers is an acceptable if predictable but well-made action flick that has more than a handful of flaws and some harebrained plot aspects, but the action is generally well-choreographed and the killings bloody, so it makes for fun if forgettable viewing. It builds itself up — poorly, unbelievably, almost laughably — as the possible first installment of a killers-killing-killers franchise, but you probably shouldn't hold your breath.
Trailer to
King of Killers:
We threw down our euro-fifty for the DVD at our local Euro Shop primarily because we find Frank Grillo oddly DILFy ever since we noticed him in The Purge: Anarchy (2014), haven't seen a Stephan Dorff flick since Cecil B. Demented (2000), and the cover blurb said "From the creators of Underworld [a plus point] and I, Frankenstein [a minus point]." Having now watched the flick, we come away with thinking that Grillo is now more GILFy than DILFy (though his rockabilly haircut is beginning to look like a persiflage); that this was definitely a quick, rent-paying project for Stephan Dorff (of Botched [207]), who has maybe three scenes for a total of maybe five minutes screen time; that the true star of the movie, former stuntman-turned-actor Alain Moussi (of Wolves [2014 / trailer] and The Day [2011 / trailer]), is sexy as hell and muscular in all the right places; and that the writer/director of King of Killers, Kevin Grevioux, who also plays the deep-voiced killer Dyson Chord in the movie, is a talented man who has a voice so deep he could probably talk us into bending over if he just whispered the right words.
That said, should the movie ever truly become a franchise, and a second installment (a.k.a. sequel) be made, it probably wouldn't be on our must-see list. We wouldn't avoid it, but we wouldn't seek it out.
Based on director Grevioux's eponymous graphic novel, King of Killers is also his directorial debut. And for a directorial debut, he has a pretty solid if flashy contemporary style, with a good eye for setting the scene and interesting points of view, but he is also a bit quick-edit heavy, particularly during the sock-'em, chop-'em, shoot-'em, stab-'em scenes. Still, for a genre film directorial debut, King of Killers looks pretty good, and there is a good chance that the man might go further. (We are far more intrigued by his follow-up project, War Dawgz [2025 / trailer], than by the concept of a sequel to King of Killers.)
After the impressive two straight minutes of production firm logos, King of Killers opens with the movie's nominal hero, Marcus Garan (Alain Moussi), at work: looking dorky but likeable with oddly unhip hipster facial hair, he quickly and bloodily and violently dispatches a bunch of guys that must be bad guys because, well, Marcus the Killer is the good guy. Any doubts that he is a good guy are of course dispelled quickly once we see that he is a loving and adoring husband to his "special unicorn" Karla (Amy Groening of Halloween Party [2019 / trailer], Teen Lust [2014 / trailer] and Father's Day [2011 / trailer]), and a loving and adoring father to his daughter, Kimberly (Zoe Worn). A tragic incident on his wedding anniversary sends Marcus into early retirement, but when his daughter is diagnosed with "she gonna die real soon" due to an enlarged heart, he accepts a mysterious offer of ten million bucks to go to Tokyo and kill the world's greatest assassin, the King of Killers, whose face is unknown...
So far, pretty generic, but by-the-numbers and cliché narrative elements are perfectly acceptable in genre films of this kind, particularly when the violence and blood is plentiful and well-staged, and the main characters are eye candy. Okay, the movie could have used a nude scene or two, particularly of the oddly deglamorized Marie Avgeropoulos (of Dead Rising: Endgame [2016 / trailer], Isolation [2015 trailer] and Numb [2015 / trailer]), who plays Asha Khanna, the singular female character — outside that of "wife" — of note in King of Killers. But, no, when it comes to skin, all we get are a couple of shirtless six-pack shots — nice, all of them, but they leave you wishing for more.
To tell much more about the plot than told above would pretty much ruin the first [relatively stale] twist of the movie, which is regularly followed by other banal twists, and for a while King of Killers could lead some people — like us here at a wasted life — to think that Grevioux was at least mildly influenced by the truly obscure and wonderfully tacky Bollywood film The Deadly Thief (1978). King of Killers, however, is far less camp and far more viscerally violent, and it quickly becomes almost a body counter: a diverse set of people die one after the other, their death almost always preceded by a prolonged and violent sock-'em, chop-'em, shoot-'em, stab-'em fight with an apparently unkillable and unstoppable person. Our favorite clash would probably be the one between main-character Marcus and the evil stock-character Rick Nigel (Ryan Tarran of the truly twisted Bloody Hell [2020 / trailer]), which ends gloriously bloody and calls to mind a death found in the classic horror flick, Angel Heart (1987 / trailer).
All that is followed, naturally, by the biggest showdown: the one between the guy we knew would be the last man standing, Marcus (Moussi), and the King of Killers... after which yet another harebrained twist occurs, setting the movie up for a possible sequel that will probably never happen.
The narrative of King of Killers is really nothing to be proud of. The family life and tragedy and work set-up and motivation of Marcus are all from Screenplay Writing 101, and none of the "twists" are actually all that surprising (other than, perhaps, the exit of the minor character Hebron [Dennis Lafond of Crook [2013 / trailer]): everything has been seen before in many another movie. Also, the way the King of Killers (the character, not the film) pulls the strings all the times not only makes the outcomes of the showdowns expectable, but also undermines him as a character: he fights well enough and kills one person after the other but, also, he remains unbelievable as the "best killer" since throughout everything he has stacked the deck in his favor. Which also, in turn, makes him oddly untrustworthy, something that totally undermines his subsequently stated intentions and the trustworthiness of the evidence he supplies that should set up the sequel.
For that, however, you get some nicely executed and violent and bloody sock-'em, chop-'em, shoot-'em, stab-'em fights and a few mildly saliva-inducing shirtless scenes. When it comes to this type of movie, you can do a lot worse than King of Killers. We rate King of Killers a good movie to watch with the guys — especially the guys that don't drool at muscular, shirtless men — that goes very well with a six-pack or two. And the very last scene, following Frank Grillo's last line of dialogue, is surely going to make the room break out in [intentional] hearty laughter.
A public service announcement from a wasted life:
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