Killing Season (2013)
John Travolta and Robert De Niro star in this outdoors action thriller. Travolta, a member of a Serbian mercenary group and De Niro a former US soldier who once came face to face in the Balkan war, seen here in a prologue. Now in the present day Travolta finds out De Niro is living retired in the remote Appalachian mountains in the United States, so sets out to get revenge on the man who killed the rest of his death squad.
As a concept this is fine, it's major problem is that it really isn't anything special and has been previously done to far superior effect in the Tommy Lee Jones / Benicio Del Toro thriller Hunted (2003) and the John Cusack / Morgan Freeman runaround The Contract (2006). The action is at times incredibly gory - witness Travolta with an arrow through both cheeks which would make Argento squirm and De Niro hung by his calf muscle from a tree - but it's all a bit too implausible and even worse repetitive, and is lumbered with what i feel is a total let down of an ending.
Whilst both De Niro and Travolta are always worth watching, Killing Season sees both heavy weight actors punching well below their weight in an outdoors thriller that is merely okay.
|