Directing: C
Acting: B-
Writing: C+
Cinematography: C+
Editing: B

When it comes to a movie like The Killer’s Game, going in with seriously low expectations is an effective way not to hate it.

I hardly loved it either, mind you. This is a transparent ripoff of John Wick, with its own gimmick: Instead of a hitman avenging the death of his wife and his dog, we get a hitman who contracts a hit on himself after finding out he has a terminal disease, only to find out he’s been misdiagnosed. He’s going to live after all! Except, the other assassins—and one in particular—are bent on “honoring the contract.”

This would all be more fun if The Killer’s Game could be watched cold, with none of this known beforehand. The problem is, there’s nothing else interesting enough about this movie to pique anyone’s interest. What other reason is there to watch it? Even with this twist made crystal clear in trailers, it landed in theaters last movie with a thud, coming in at #6 and earning a paltry $2.6 million at the box office.

With a better script, The Killer’s Game might have worked. Instead, wedged in between some action choreography that is actually pretty good, it veers perilously close to self-parody. Leaning a tad more into earnestness, or even in the other direction into over parody, might have been an improvement. What we get, in this film directed by (of course) John Wick stuntman J.J. Perry, are characters who actually utter lines heard in countless other movies to the pint of ridiculous, with a straight face. When Ben Kingsley, as Dave Bautista’s hitman mentor, says “Don’t hate the player, hate the game,” not only is it played as preposterously profound, it’s at least the third time we hear a line that dumb and overdone.

Ben Kingsley, even at age 80, clearly just likes to work. Sometimes he’s amazing (Sexy Beast, Hugo), and other times . . . not so much. This is one of those other times. Don’t get me wrong; the B-minus level acting in this movie is the best thing it has going for it when we aren’t being treated to creative gruesome hit jobs. Granted, Perry ups the ante with each introduction of a new assassin or team of assassins. But then it goes so far that we wind up with Chilean martial artist and actor Mark Zaror as “El Botas,” doing a kind of one-man tango, complete with boot spurs as lethal weapons, as he cuts through his victims.

There is also more than just a splash of Kill Bill in this movie, with stylized introductions of characters with fun names, and blood gushing out all over the place. We get plenty of broken bones and dismemberment and bodies blown apart, some of it in a church—where, conveniently, there happens to be a priest handy when a couple decides on the fly that they want to get married. But not before the hitman must confess the entirety of his sins!

I won’t deny that I actually had a bit of fun watching The Killer’s Game. But that only works when there’s nothing better to choose from in theaters, and we’re setting a pretty low bar here. Bautista is barely serviceable as a leading man playing an actual human (as opposed to, say, an alien, or a Harkonnen), but the fact that he’s so giant and jacked it’s almost otherworldly makes it a challenge to accept him as someone who is in any way normal. Not that a hitman is normal, although a big part of the plot here is how he falls in love with a professional dancer played by Sofia Boutella. When they were shown in bed together, all I could think about is how dangerous it would be for them to literally sleep together, when he could just roll over and crush her to death.

The most frustrating thing about The Killer’s Game is its wasted potential. No one goes into a movie like this expecting high art—we’re here to watch people maim and kill each other. That’s the standard by which it should be judged: how well that is executed. Sadly, even by that metric, it’s pretty substandard, a constant riff on themes and concepts from far better influences that this movie completely fails to innovate in any way.

*Dave Bautista demonstrates his acting range.*

Overall: C+