Killers

So Who Are You Again?

A blonde being led by a dark haired handsome man on an adventure that goes beyond her wildest dreams, with her life constantly on knife's edge with all the shoot-em-ups happening around them. Is this the Cruise-Diaz flick Knight and Day? No, it's the Kutcher-Heigl film Killers instead, having drawn first blood this summer based on a similar tale of a killer taking on a reluctant sidekick inadvertently in his adventures against armed men. Or at least that's the parallel that can be drawn from the trailers.

Killers turned out to be a film deeply rooted in matrimonial issues once the courtship scenes breezed by, with both protagonists Spencer (Ashton Kutcher) and Jen (Katherine Heigl) meeting up through serendipity in Nice, France, before a whirlwind romance fast forwards the film to 3 years later when they are already blissfully married, after a perfect courtship lands them into that dreamily happy, married life.

Until of course Spencer's past as a hired assassin for the CIA catches up with him and interrupts his mundane, routine life, with the agency wanting him dead for walking out on them. So begins a madcap chase involving assassins out to get their bounty by getting rid of Spencer, and him trying his best to juggle both keeping him and his wife alive, and appeasing Jen because his lies about his past is threatening the blissful life he had always dreamt of living. In some ways, the predicaments and arguments the couple get into seem to be similar to that of the Carell-Fey film Date Movie earlier this year, where similar themes of married life got explored, though this one interspersed with plenty of guns-ablazing action sequences, and token car chases.

Between Heigl and Kutcher, it seemed that the former has all the best lines in the film, and regardless of what others may think, I feel she still continues with her great comic timing and is totally at ease with romantic comedies, so much so that she's treading on dangerous ground in being typecast as the typical ditzy blonde in rom-coms, that she might as probably be heir apparent to roles that normally goes to Cameron Diaz. Kutcher continues his pretty boy role here, with his Spencer being a little bit more mature and actually yearning to settle down rather than to continue with his jet-setting lifestyle as an international hired assassin, only to discover that Jen's dad Mr Komfeldt (Tom Selleck, still keeping that signature mustache in good shape) is one tough cookie to crack.

The film is paced so fast from start to finish that you hardly have time to sit and kick back, with everything passing you by in a flash, from action scenes to dramatic ones filling up the in-betweens. The genuine laughs come in sporadic moments, the action nothing quite spectacular, but the pairing up and chemistry shared between this couple from bliss to bicker, is probably the highlight of the film. There's the token twist that added a little spice to a rather straight-forward plot, though it's something that you'll probably see coming from a mile away, since having a star in the film is something of a dead giveaway when you realize that that person is somewhat grossly underutilized.

Now for that Cruise-Diaz vehicle to come by and let's see if that can blow away the competition, or surrender to either Date Movie, or Killers. Stay tuned.