Killer Elite (which has nothing to do with Sam Peckinpah’s 1975 film of the same name) is the perfect movie if mindless action is what you’re after.

In the opening sequence, Jason Statham and Robert De Niro (he looks good with a machine gun) play mercenaries for hire on a kill in Mexico. But Statham is wounded and vows to get out of the business, so retires to Australia.

But then he has to rescue De Niro, who’s been taken hostage by an Omani sheik so Statham will kill three Special Air Service (SAS) soldiers who killed three of his sons. SAS men are probably the best elite forces in the world, but Statham sets out to kill them to rescue his friend.

Meanwhile Clive Owen, another former SAS soldier, realizes someone is methodically killing the SAS guys and is out to stop Statham. This leads to an involved, sometimes confusing series of fights and chases as these two professional killers try to take each other out.

If you’re looking for lots of gunfire, car chases, violence and some unbelievable stunts, this is the film to see. What makes it even more unbelievable is that it’s supposedly a true story, based on a non-fiction book called The Feather Men by Sir Ranulph Fiennes, himself a former SAS officer. They say truth is stranger than fiction and that certainly applies here, since even allowing for Hollywood exaggeration, it all seems highly improbable.

Rating: two deer out of five

Next Week on Video

Sorry, was a week early for Transformers: Dark of the Moon.

Alf Cryderman is a Red Deer freelance writer and old movie buff.