King of Killers

Producer, writer, director and co-star Kevin Grevioux makes his directorial debut with this film, and he did a better job with that, than using his writing experience to come up with a better screenplay. There's some decent action sequences, but sadly, most are overshadowed by Grevioux's horrible cinematography choices. I don't mind bold colors and high contrast to make a film feel animated in a comic book sort of way, but when you dial down the brightness, all a viewer sees are paint color splashes amongst shadowy backgrounds. Even the daylight scenes were too dark. This is amateur-hour filmmaking and makes for a frustrating viewer experience. Then you have his screenplay which is a knock-off of every assassin movie ever made, that was predictable, convoluted, cliched and generic. The normally comfortable 92 min runtime felt never ending with unnecessary sub-plots and ridiculous side-characters. Aside from the decent twist and best action parts towards the ending, the rest of the main narrative was repetitive, exhausting, unimaginative and dull. It's a generous 4/10 all going to Grillo's excellent and best performance of all the characters, albeit he deserves to be in much better films instead of these bottom bin B-films.

As someone who has hardly watched hitman movies, I would say King of Killers is just borderline watchable (or so-bad-it's-good to some). It bombards viewers with stereotypical plot points that we've had enough of in this genre. Name one and it's most likely in the film. On top of that, many could have guessed the plotline just by the title alone. King of Killers clearly doesn't offer anything innovative nor does it try to revamp the genre. It just wants to look cool. Seeing Frank Grillo play the over-the-top villain was enjoyable, however. Another positive thing about King of Killers is that any movie watched after it would feel 10 times better.

The movie is 1 and a half hour, and it only starts to get going around the hour mark.. with too much preamble that isn't worth the wait.

But if you enjoy scarce "stock" cinematic shots of cities, with vibrant sun-showered colors and clarity that don't match the rest of the movie.. you might take something out of it. Otherwise, prepare yourselves for incredibly awful and long-winded villain dialogue, obscured dull action, bad CGI squibs, generic sound mixing and crappy editing (particularly the 90s TV transitions), a charmless band of boring assassins and an unsatisfying dumb ending.

The premise of an Assassin's tournament could have been fun if done well.. but by defining a main character with a tragic backstory that pushes him forward makes for bad storytelling in such context. Not to mention their plans for a sequel that is probably not happening! Not to say that the story going forward wouldn't be enticing at all.

Too cheap in all departments, can't recommend anyone waste their time.

It's my first review, I guess. I'm not quiet sure why I'm so eager to get this of my chest. Maybe it's because I pitty Frank Grillos fate in this movie. He is probably the best villain I encountered in the last few movies. But the remaining cast ... oh boy. The main Protagonist is a really good martial artist - I guess. His acting skills however made me want to fast forward to the next brawl. They really are quite good! The support characters are nothing to worry about, but do not shine ether. At this point you most certainly got a good picture of what it feels like to watch "king of killers". The plot is straight forward but not in the good way. During some passages it is confusing or to be precise not making ANY sense. Example: At some point they team up, just to get separated 30 seconds later. But the situation somehow makes it impossible for 3 of the best assassins worldwide a) to know who is on which floor or b) to just freakin say something to each other. Like "I found the freakin bad guy". Seriously? I could rumble on like this for hours.

For the sake of fairness: I watched it not in english, but I doubt it would make ANY difference.

So 4 out of 10. Recommended just for martial art ... for fans of a good brawl.

This is definitely no Oscar winning film; however, it holds entertainment value for sure. Its a sit back and watch some meatheads kill each other kind of flick. The acting outside of Stephen Dorf, Frank Grillo and the protagonist is not professional.

If you are looking for an hour and a half of mindless gunslinging and martial arts this might be for you. The happy 'family' moments showing how happy the protagonist is before his family gets wrecked is predictable and skippable.

If you can look beyond all of that and are just here for the fights then you might be good with this one. They seem to have also set it up for a sequel, but don't hold your breath on that one. 6/10.