Killers

Director Robert Luketic is clearly interested in the gender divide, but he seems to have rather hurriedly exhausted what little insight he has to offer on the subject. He once directed bubbly blonde Reese Witherspoon in the sweet little movie Legally Blonde, which gave the legal comedy subgenre a healthy shot of girl power. That was welcome, but what Luketic has been up to lately is not. That he's been running in circles with Katherine Heigl, she of the bouncy blonde locks and nicely honed comic timing, is especially irritating, because Heigl deserves better.

The latest collaboration between director and star has resulted in the floppy action-comedy Killers, which humourlessly cribs from similarly themed flicks like True Lies and Mr. and Mrs. Smith, neither of which were too original to begin with. But at least those movies were somewhat funny and featured some solid action sequences. Killers prefers to go the lowest common denominator route to tell the tale of a C.I.A. agent played by Ashton Kutcher (really? Does he actually deserve such a suave role?), who falls for a pretty girl (that's Heigl, trying her best to bring something funny to this movie).

Kutcher's Spencer is haunted by his murderous past and sees Heigl's bubbly Jen as an excuse to change his life. Before we know it, Spencer has quit the agency and we're flashing forward to three years later, where the happy couple have settled down for a cozy married life in an idyllic American suburb. But of course, Spencer's past isn't done with him yet and he soon has to expose his true identity (cold-blooded killer, but protector of the world, too!) to his wife in the midst of a hailstorm of bullets.

It is at this point that Luketic first attempts to boil down the different genders to caveman logic. Man is heroic, handsome, violent, and he knows how to protect Woman. Man may or may not beat chest like ape at this point. Woman is innocent, sweet, attractive, but somewhat clueless and mostly helpless. Woman may or may not (okay, she will) emit a shrill scream at this point. This is Luketic's approach to the gender divide. He creates the most sexist, obvious, simplistic depiction of a man and a woman and then slowly builds from there.

Just like with his past Heigl collaboration, the junky, idiotic The Ugly Truth (where, once again, Heigl was the closest thing to a saving grace), Luketic embraces the clichés and stereotypes of both sexes in hopes that his vain attempts at insight will actually feel profound in comparison. It doesn't really work, since it's far too transparent to feel honest and far too pitiful to be impressive. At the very least, Jen is eventually allowed to grow a little beyond the screaming simplicity of her earlier scenes. As the plot progresses, Jen is tossed into harm's way enough times that she starts to put her own stamp on it and she begins to feel mildly comfortable in these life-threatening situations.

The action heroine role looks good on Heigl, but she's only permitted to act cool and confident in the face of danger for the briefest of moments in this movie. She first holds a gun with all of the prim posture and icky facial responses that Luketic views as an appropriate female image, but she later wields the weapon with true feminine might. It's certainly brief, but it does make me think that maybe Killers would be a little more unique and a lot more interesting if the roles were reversed and Heigl were the spy protecting a sheepish husband. After all, I'm more inclined to believe Heigl as a gun-toting adventurer than Kutcher, who has the smouldering look and the chiselled abs, but little of the convincing charm.

The supporting cast boasts Tom Selleck and Catherine O'Hara as Jen's parents, which should be a great thing. But for all of the pair's promise of combined veteran ability, they never really produce the expected result. Selleck is a calm and collected man who has a knack for ensuring that everything goes his way. O'Hara is a boozy woman whose entire purpose appears to be making the audience laugh when she starts guzzling back alcohol every chance she gets. Except that none of it is particularly funny. There's no timing from the pair to make the jokes snap, which isn't helped by the fact that the jokes simply stink.

Killers has some considerable onscreen talent (even the terribly miscast Kutcher is somewhat likable, albeit in a rather wooden way), but Luketic has no idea how to effectively utilize his actors. It's a shame when a comedienne as unique and wonderful as Catherine O'Hara appears in a movie where she has nothing to do and never so much as flirts with the possibility of something funny. Heigl, representing a new generation of funny, talented women, is also wasted here, but at least she manages to be entertaining once she's allowed to break away from all the shrill screaming and flash a bit of personality.

With its cutesy concept and mostly encouraging cast, Killers is packaged with some light promise. And to be fair, the movie isn't really boring or terribly painful to sit through. But it is a weak effort that never manages to succeed in any of the genres it attempts to tackle. It's a romantic movie where the love story is without any chemistry-fuelled spark. It's a comedy that botches nearly every joke. And it's an action movie that features a few serviceable sequences, but ultimately fails to show us anything remotely refreshing. There's really not much to applaud here and the worst part is that Luketic seems content to just churn out this refried crap. I love that he's passionate about the gender divide, but I wish that his observations weren't so laughably shallow. The subject deserves better. Most of the cast deserves better. And perhaps most importantly in the realm of entertainment, we deserve better.