Killer Elite - Some old school action (plus a caterpillar) 

'Killer Elite' stars three heavyweight performers - Robert DeNiro (nuff said), Jason Statham, Clive Owen and a three inch hair caterpillar who balances delightfully on Clive Owen's upper lip throughout every last shootout.

Statham is an ex mercenary whose mentor, DeNiro, gets kidnapped, forcing poor Jason out of his Down Under hideaway to rescue him while pursued by Clive Owen and the caterpillar.  I found this an odd film, not the plot, the acting, or the shootouts, just the retro UK feel. I'm used to seeing these sorts of films set in America and thinking nothing of it. Yet spending nearly two hours watching secret societies and black op killers driving early eighties cars through London's council estates just didn't seem real to me (like getting caught up in international spy rings happens to me every day).

Killer Elite kind of takes everything that's good about the four leads: Statham's `hard man' action scenes, DeNiro's lovable gangster persona (okay, so he's a mercenary in this, but, seriously, he could be straight off the set of 'Goodfellas'), Clive Owen's suave should-have-been-James-Bond style and the caterpillar's fuzziness in the face of danger. Then the movie blends all of these together, even claiming that it's all based on true events (or a book at least claiming it was all real - I don't know much about the source material, so I can't say how true to life it is.  However, there is some text at the end of the film that, if true, is probably some of the most interesting moments in the film!).

I got the impression that the film-makers wanted to rely on DeNiro's 'star power' to help sell the film.  Hopefully it's not too much of a spoiler to mention that he's not in it as much as most of us would like.  In fact, you can almost see that he's only been paid for about two weeks' work and only appears on a couple of locations.  Just like Statham's 'love interest' also mainly exists on one set only!

If you like your action `old school' and `rough and ready,' you'll probably like 'Killer Elite.' Dare I say it, it's probably `lads only?' It's hardly a `chick flick,' although some ladies may manage to sit through it based on Statham's arms, Owen's gaze and the caterpillar's strokability.

Solid and better than average, but, ultimately, nothing new. 

7/10 if I woke up on Groundhog Day and had to watch this again, I could live with that