KILLER ELITE IS ONLY FOR THE OLD SCHOOL ACTION PURISTS

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- but the blue-tinted, over-edited shakeycam fight scenes where you can't see that much of the action ensure that it's anything but an old-school action movie where you could really see the stars try to kill each other and tell what was going on in the stunt scenes. Too much of it is just a typical modern see-anything-but-the-action movie.

I didn't see much shakey-cam in the action scenes of this movie, almost all that I can remember had a static camera. There might have been a little for accent, but if that's the case then it certainly wasn't memorable. I remember seeing everything in the Statham/Owen fight scene for example.

This certainly had its problems and issues, but shakey cam wasn't one of them. You make it sound like it was directed by Doug Liman or the team from Cloverfield. It didn't look like that at all.

The main issue was the script and the set-up for the action. Set-up is one of the most important parts of an action film and this one failed in that regard.

"Bulls**t MR.Han Man!!"--Jim Kelly in Enter the Dragon

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I tend to disagree with those of you you who claim that Statham/Owen fight is too much of a shakycam. The fights scenes are indeed edited a lot with frequent change of shots and camera angle, but I didn't observe too much of the shakeycam which is so popular nowadays. It is very clear who is hitting whom and which body parts take the impact. You can easily follow all the blows and blocks and the directors intention to show the clash of two pros is achieved imho.
For anyone who wants instantly to check the fight scene in question - it is available for watching in my blog post dedicated to the movie http://www.ratingshark.com/%20/killer-elite

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expendables was better.

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i thought it was a lot more interesting than most crap action movies these days. and the violence was refreshingly R rated.

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I was REALLY disappointed by Killer Elite, and pretty much all of that blame lies squarely on the shoulders of the trailer. I've never seen a trailer have so little relation to the actual content of the film. With all it's crazy action and rocking soundtrack, it made the film looking like it was going to be a mental oldskool action flick, like Transporter or Arnie's Commando. But the reality was the film was a lot slower than that. It wasn't that it was terrible, it was just so far from what I was expecting I couldn't get into it.

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I'll give you the first Bourne which was excellent for its genre but same as The Mechanic - no chance and Drive a better film...not for me it wasn't.

KE was a decent action film, maybe the era had something to do with its appeal - reminded me of The Professionals (UK Starsky & Hutch but proper).

Granted it is far from perfect but good level of entertainment....if you like that kind of thing, which i do :-)

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@ loco 73 - That is a pretty cool scene, too bad I saw it out of context but I doubt I'll ever see that series in its entirety. The camera cut too quickly at first but it settled down when the action really got going.

You should check out Universal Soldier: Regeneration, it has one of the best fight scenes I've seen in any action film. In fact, the movie is full of terrific and brutal fights, but there is one in particular that will stand out to you for sure.

As for Killer Elite, I thought the Owen/Statham fight was pretty well done, I didn't notice much of a shaky camera but my concern with modern film fights is the editing. I can't stand the rapid camera cuts in today's fight scenes, combined with a shaky cam all they do is create confusion (the film makers would prefer to call it "urgency") and remove me from the action. Bourne seemed to have started the craze where they can't just focus on well choreographed for more than a few seconds at a time. At the time I was fine with what Bourne did, I always appreciate a fresh experience, but when the Bond movies started to copy them I knew things had gone too far - keep Bourne out of Bond.

Killer Elite has some decent action, but it's more of an action thriller which fails as a thriller. The action is good, I enjoyed the film, but in reading summaries on those forum about what the book was about, the film would have been both a superior thriller and a superior action flick had it stuck to the story of the book. Hollywood always does this, they adapt a book to make into a movie and completely bastardize the story which made the book good.

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look.....ima let you finish , but Ishtar is the greatest movie of all time !!

Morons ...your bus is leaving.

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This film is a thousand times better than that garbage called THE EXPENDABLES - but that isn't saying much. The action was solid, but the story was ultimately too preposterous. Like Statham infiltrating an SAS training exercise to take out one of their targets -- all depending on him slipping the guy a fatal powder in his drink. Just infiltrating the exercise was ridiculous enough. But presuming he was going to catch him at the moment he was drinking and spike his mug... Gimme a break.

And was it just me, but the first thirty minutes of this film are damn near indecipherable. I couldn't keep track of what was going on. It got clearer as it progressed, but it wasn't all that engrossing. But the notion that not only do they have to kill these highly trained SAS guys and make the killings look like accidents (yeah, right!), but they also have to extract a confession from them before they do the deed is beyond freaking believable in any way.

I will say that Statham and Owen delivered on the action and charisma. I would like to see them in better material next time.

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Well, it's not something that can easily be explained without you having a love for 80s and 90s action flicks first. This movie is NOT for those "old school purists" though, I strongly disagree with the OP on that; he is probably just happy it's wasn't PG-13, CGI heavy, nor plagued by an over abundance of shaky camera work and rapid MTV style editing during the action.

Old School action is how the action movie used to be made: with an R rating, brutal fight scenes which are well choreographed and not chopped up into bits during the editing process, and actual stunt work. Some may like witty one liners sprinkled throughout as well. That is old school action, but Killer Elite isn't a pure action film anyway, it was just marketed as one.

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