Killing Season – How to nearly kill people

When I heard there was a film on DVD that starred both Robert DeNiro and John Travolta, I kind of wondered how I’d missed its theatrical release in the cinema.  Well, now I’ve watched it, I can sort of see why.

It’s not bad.  It’s just not that good.  It has all the feel of a B-movie that has somehow landed itself a couple of A-list actors to star in it.

It starts in the nineties where Robert DeNiro was a U.S. military commander in Eastern Europe.  During his service time he was responsible for the (illegal) deaths of a squad of war criminals.  Only he didn’t kill John Travolta enough and now, several years later, he’s tracked DeNiro down to his idyllic mountain cabin in the woods and is out for deadly revenge.

What follows is the ultimate ‘cat and mouse’ chase.  And it lasts for about an hour and a half.  However, the film’s major let-down is the fact that, once it becomes clear that each man wants and has to kill the other in order to survive, it leaves the viewer a little annoyed when they just don’t bother.  The balance of power shifts between the two so often that they take it in turns to have the upper hand, yet never bother actually killing the other.  Yes, I know the film would be over at about the twenty minute mark if one of them bothered to ‘off’ the other, but it just became a little frustrating after the eighth time one had the other at his mercy, but decided to talk instead of kill.

Plus DeNiro had Travolta’s accent to worry about – sometimes it sounded like he was being stalked by Sacha Baron Cohen’s ‘Borat’ character!

But it’s not all bad.  Accent or no accent, both actors are pretty good (as you’d expect with such A-list weight on board).  Plus there are some pretty sadistic moments of gore than really will leave you a little squeamish.

But, at the end of the day, it’s basically one on one and you only really have to skip to the final chapter of the DVD to find out who ultimately comes out on top.

One for fans of DeNiro/Travolta only, as they do turn in decent enough performances, only the story (or lack of) does tend to let it down a bit and reduce what could have been a classic film into a glorified B-movie.

6/10 May just keep you awake if Freddy Krueger was haunting your nights