CommentsXp Best movie ever!

Bergorks If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

Brenda The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

Zandra The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

lost-in-limbo Talk about one very strange, put together film by legendary film-maker Sam Peckinpah. It's choppy as hell, rather mysterious and ambiguous in its intentions. I liked it, but at the same time I couldn't help but feel disappointed in this raw, explosive old-fashion action thriller with an exciting cast. We're thrown right into it at the beginning with a splintering explosion. Elite assassins and good friends Mike Locken and George Hansen work for a private crime fighting organization who handles the assignments that the CIA prefer not to touch. During a job this friendship comes apart when one of them is bought off by a higher bidder. At this time Peckinpah had fallen out of favour with Hollywood, but was given another chance with "The Killer Elite" and plenty would say it's one of his lesser works, if not. One noticeable thing here was the violence was cut down to remove its graphic nature to allow for a PG-13 rating for commercial success, but even with that it still remained unpleasant in details. Rather disappointing, but its flaws were more than just that. The editing was all over-the-shop, but even the script just seemed to become even more bewildering and daft the further along the story's sinister scheming went. The clunky narrative is one big unscrupulous game, throwing in themes that always seem to pepper Peckinpah films in the shape of friendship, loyalty, honour and personal survival in a dog eat dog world. It was hard just making sense of what was transpiring, that in the end all you could do is marvel at the dazzling parade of fashionable violence done in slow-motion that was orchestrated in some stunning set-pieces like the climatic standoff in a battleship graveyard featuring ninjas(?!). Peckinpah confidently does it in style, but also with ticker. Along for the ride is a top-notch ensemble cast featuring the likes of James Caan, Arthur Hill, Bo Hopkins, Burt Young, Robert Duvall, Gig Young and Mako. While I would say it was terribly overlong and ponderous, but I was still gripped due to Caan's enigmatically likable, but hardened performance. Watching his character go through the recovery stages after his serious injuries, fuelled by revenge and pushing himself to be fit again to carry out his job. You can't help but feel for him and want to see him succeed. The chemistry between Caan and the classy Duvall early on in the film offers some amusement. Even some scenes with the laconic Burt Young offer a laugh. Then there's the unpredictable Hopkins. Peckinpah makes great use of the San Francisco locations and long-time collaborator Jerry Fielding composes the thundering music score. Bold, macho and gritty entertainment even though it has uneven plotting it provides the big bangs and chop-suey in its ludicrous format. "You just retired Mike. Enjoy it"

virek213 By the mid-1970s, the career of director Sam Peckinpah had basically hit the skids. He had seen one more film of his (PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID) butchered by a studio (MGM) in 1973; then, in 1974, his most overtly personal film, the admittedly ghoulish-sounding BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA, was roundly trashed by audiences and critics alike. And on top of that, the excesses that had been plaguing him on and off for years were starting to dominate his life. Yet through all of this, he somehow managed to pull off the good when he was sober. A case in point was the action thriller THE KILLER ELITE, released near the end of 1975.In this film, James Caan portrays an employee for a CIA-sponsored offshoot group called ComTeg (Communications Integrity) who, in protecting a German political figure (Helmut Dantine), is maliciously wounded by his partner (Robert Duvall) in the leg and arm. Though his superiors in ComTeg (Arthur Hill; Gig Young) tell him that those injuries are so severe that he may never be able to walk fully again, Caan vows to get back into the game, exposing himself to strenuous rehabilitation and martial arts exercises. When Hill gives him the chance, via protecting a Japanese politician (Mako) until he can be gotten out of the country, Caan immediately grabs onto it, especially with the fringe benefit of knowing Duvall has resurfaced and is gunning for Mako on his own. The whole operation turns out to be part of an internecine battle of wills inside ComTeg between their two superiors, first resulting in a fatal confrontation at the Bethlehem Steel shipyard, and then a high-energy showdown aboard a mothballed World War II vessel in Suisun Bay involving Japanese kung-fu masters.It is easy to simply dismiss THE KILLER ELITE (which, however, shouldn't be confused with the similarly-titled, but unrelated and much more violent, 2011 film of the same name) as lesser Peckinpah, but he should still be given credit for having taken a strictly commercial property (much like his big 1972 hit THE GETAWAY), and turning it into a solid action film with some bursts of sardonic humor, plus points being made about the dirty business of the CIA at a time when the agency was being battered in the press for its foreign shenanigans and domestic spying, plus its role in covering up Watergate. He would return to this theme in his last film, 1983's THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND.Under Peckinpah's direction, both Caan and Duvall, who had appeared together before in THE GODFATHER, do solid work as the two friends set up against one another; and Hill and Gig Young (the latter of whom made for a dispassionate killer in ALFREDO GARCIA) are equally good in their bureaucratic roles. Burt Young and Bo Hopkins do good solid turns as Caan's two partners in the protection of Mako's ambitious Oriental political figure. As is typical with Peckinpah, the action scenes are shot and edited in that characteristic Peckinpah style; and the on-location cinematography by Philip Lathrop, whose credits include 1965's THE CINCINNATI KID (from which Peckinpah was unceremoniously fired), is also superb. And finally, Jerry Fielding, working with Peckinpah one final time, comes up with another iconoclastic music score that combines jazz, dissonance, and Far Eastern music elements.The end result may not have been "classic Peckinpah" (it is certainly less bloody than THE WILD BUNCH, STRAW DOGS, or ALFREDO GARCIA), but THE KILLER ELITE is still far superior to most of the ultra-violent action flicks that would follow in Peckinpah's wake.

Bill Slocum The problem with "The Killer Elite" is that just by seeking this film out, and investing time to watch it, you are putting more effort into the experience than many of its principals did, particularly director Sam Peckinpah.The already volatile Peckinpah was heading into rough weather with this film. According to at least one biographer, this was where he became acquainted with cocaine. Add to that his binge drinking, and it's no wonder things fell apart.It's a shame, because the concept behind the film is a good one, and the first ten minutes promise much. Mike Locken (James Caan) and George Hansen (Robert Duvall) are private contractors who do a lot of dirty work for the CIA. They move quick, live well, and seem like the best of friends - then something happens to shatter their brotherhood.An opening scene shows them blowing up a building - why exactly we aren't told, par for the course in terms of this film's murky motivation. But the implication is these guys hurt people and don't really care - antiheroes much like the Wild Bunch of Peckinpah's not-so-long-ago. An opening title tells us they work for ComTeg, then adds with obvious tongue in cheek "...the thought the CIA might employ such an organization for any purpose is, of course, preposterous." That's a pretty clever way of letting the audience know all bets are off.Add to that a traditionally strong Peckinpah backup cast, including Burt Young, Gig Young, and Peckinpah regular Bo Hopkins in the plum role of a madman who can't pass up an opportunity to be shot at for $500 a day, and you only wish that the scriptwriters, including the celebrated Sterling Silliphant, tried to do something more with the story than turn it into a platform for lazy one-liners and bad chop-socky knockoffs. An attempt at injecting a dose of liberal social commentary is awkwardly shoehorned in. "You're so busy doing their dirty work, you can't tell who the bad guys are," someone tells Locken, as if either he or we need it pointed out.Worse still are Peckinpah's clumsy direction and sluggish pacing. We're 40 minutes into the film before we get our first battle scene, a completely chaotic collection of random shots where a bunch of people we haven't even met before are seen fighting at San Francisco Airport, their battle intercut with a conversation in an office suite.By the end of the film, what's left of the cast is having a battle inside a fleet of mothballed Victory Ships, ninjas running out in the open to be gunned down while Caan tosses off one liners that undercut any hint of real suspense. "Lay me seven-to-five, I'll take the little guy," he wisecracks just before a climatic samurai duel between two ninja warriors - from China, which we all know is the land of the Ninja. (The battle takes place in San Francisco, but surprisingly no Mounties arrive to break things up.)Caan is much better in smaller scenes, like when Locken, recovering from some nasty injuries, is told by one of his bosses, played by a smooth Arthur Hill, that he's been "Humpty-dumped" by the organization. Caan refuses to stay down, and his recovery scenes, though momentum-killing for the movie, feature fine acting from him and Amy Heflin, Van's daughter, as a supportive nurse. Caan was one of the 1970s' best actors, and his laconic byplay with Heflin, Duvall, Hopkins, and both Youngs give "Killer Elite" real watchability.But you don't watch "Killer Elite" thinking about that. You watch it thinking of the film that got away.

Robert J. Maxwell I give this confusing tale of mayhem and treachery some bonus points because Sam Pekinpah was able to make it at all. By this time, he was what he himself called "a functioning alcoholic." And if this doesn't bear watching too often, it's still a colorful and relatively well-done piece of journeyman film making.The story has to do with a private company that works for the CIA. This handful of well-paid professionals do the wet work and other odd jobs for the government. Pekinpah adds a sarcastic printed epilogue, claiming that the idea of the CIA privatizing its usual responsibilities is "preposterous." Hah hah. At the time it struck me, as it probably did almost everyone else, as emblematic of Pekinpah's roguish paranoia. Now, what with Blackwater and other private agencies guarding high-level power brokers abroad, interrogating noncombatant enemy detainees, and who knows what else -- responsible to no one and costing a thousand times what the U. S. Marines would cost -- it no longer strikes me as too "preposterous." I don't know if it's worth going into the details of the plot. Everybody double crosses everybody else, except Robert Duvall, who seems to have double crossed James Caan's protagonist, really doesn't. There is a powerful Chinese political family that must be guarded from other powerful Chinese, several shoot outs, a comic interlude with a state trooper on a bridge, and a climactic ninja fight aboard the mothball fleet at Suisun Bay, where I first learned of President Kennedy's assassination. The bad guys are suitably punished and the good guys sail away on a sloop with lots of money, leaving corruption behind. Pekinpah blamed the movie's disjointedness on Hollywood and one imagines he put himself aboard that yacht as it plowed its sleek way under Golden Gate bridge, with Pekinpah himself at the helm.James Caan and the others give decent performances. Caan exudes a masterful calm, even when he's collapsing. Something came to me while watching Burt Young's performance as an auxiliary hood and Caan's sidekick. The guy can't act. He was Curly in Chinatown, the cuckold who was warned by Jack Nicholson not to eat the venetian blinds. And he was fabulous there, as he is here. He certainly looked the part of the Lower Proletarian -- plump, simian-face, balding, heavily accented. And his locutions emerged out of nowhere, sounding vaguely odd, vaguely original. Then, seeing this again, it occurred to me that they came out the way they did, not because Young was exercising some kind of sprezaturra, that he was successfully hiding his art, but because he was artless to begin with. Don't get me wrong. This doesn't make his performance any less effective. I have to say, though, that I preferred Gig Young as a light comedian rather than a serious heavy. Arthur Hill, with his generic Canadian voice, looks and acts fine in either kind of role. He's always dependable.When I learned Pekinpah was shooting a movie in the city, I watched the scene at the beginning in which a building is blown up near the Embarcadero. (It took several tries.) I couldn't wait for it to be released, but when it was, it turned out to be something of a disappointment, considering Pekinpah's earlier work. A considerable step down to commercialism. Yet, I can't say that it's badly done for what it is. If some of it -- that ninja sword fight at the end -- is just plain silly, there are indications that Pekinpah knew how ridiculous it was and nudged the audience from time to time. It's full of color and action, San Francisco offers some stunning locations, and if the story isn't very original, I don't know that anyone else would have made it quite this way. We should all "function" this well.