There is a wide gulf between the movies Sam Peckinpah made with his whole heart in it and the ones he did for the money. Peckinpah's greatness shines in The Wild Bunch, Ride The High Country, Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia and Straw Dogs - all movies he co-wrote. But when Peckinpah didn't have his name on the script, it was easy to tell. That's the case for 1975's The Killer Elite, a film that gave the rebellious director the chance to work with two of the hottest actors in the '70s and yet, his heart isn't in it.
The Killer Elite was scripted by Marc Norman and Stirling Silliphant and based on a book by Robert Rostand. There are a few common Peckinpah themes that make it easy to see why he was interested in the project, but they tend to get lost in a poor espionage conspiracy plot that doesn't embrace its simplicity. The plot finds two contract killers – played by James Caan and Robert Duvall – who think they are playing for two different teams.
At the start, Mike (Caan) and George (Duvall) are celebrating their latest kill for ComTeg, a fictional agency of assassins who do jobs for the CIA. But George turns his gun on Mike, shooting his elbow and knee, hoping to put him in retirement. After an excruciatingly long Yojimbo-esque 30 minutes, with Peckinpah showing every single stage of Mike's recovery process, the movie finally gets moving again when Mike gets offered a job to protect Cheng (Mako of The Sand Pebbles), an Asian politician in San Francisco.
It turns out that George has been hired to kill Cheng, so Mike takes the opportunity to go after his old buddy. He gathers up his team – crazy sniper Miller (The Wild Bunch's Bo Hopkins) and mechanic Mac (Burt Young, Rocky's brother-in-law) – to protect Cheng.
There's an element of The Wild Bunch in there, with two friends now on opposite sides, but that theme is rarely touched on in The Killer Elite. It's one of the signs that this movie wasn't completely Peckinpah's idea. He was always interested in the relationship between men, going back to Ride the High Country. But in The Killer Elite, we never really get the sense that Mike and George were truly friends because George has zero second thoughts about turning on his friend. Peckinpah always embellished his movies with emotion – no character was completely black and white. Duvall is hardly in the film and he doesn't even participate in the final sequence. That's like Robert Ryan skipping out on the end of The Wild Bunch.
The Killer Elite is also a completely predictable movie and it's almost like Peckinpah knew that about the script. He doesn't even have Caan act surprised when he learns about his friend working for the opposing side.
Peckinpah himself is phoning in his directing. Whereas slow-motion in Wild Bunch or Alfredo Garcia was used to turn violence into poetry, here it seems forced and is used poorly with karate. The best directed scene in the film – the shootout in Chinatown – doesn't even use slow motion. It's a kinetic, non-stop action sequence, building with a unique car chase. Sure, it's hard not to think of Bullitt, but Peckinpah's sense of humor is actually alive in those moments.
It is a bit curious that Peckinpah decided to make this movie anyway. Rarely was he interested in taking on a blatantly political story. That's not saying that his Westerns and other films weren't political, but they acted as allegories. This movie makes its politics incredibly clear, even while Caan tries his best to not give a s**t. The “international intrigue” aspect is so poorly played because we never leave San Francisco and that's never been something Peckinpah looked at in his best films. He liked smaller stories that concerned only the characters onscreen, not government agencies in the background.
Sadly, we can get a brilliant looking Blu-ray for this film from Twilight Time, yet we're still waiting on Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid and Ride the High Country. Seriously, few films from the mid-'70s look as good as The Killer Elite does on the new Blu-ray. Thankfully, the disc includes the absolutely incredible Noon Wine, a 1966 TV episode Peckinpah directed. It stars Jason Robards and Olivia de Havilland and is a beautiful testament to what Peckinpah could do. It's easily better than The Killer Elite.
Obviously, The Killer Elite isn't completely without any merit. As previously noted, there's some well-directed action sequences and Caan gives a pretty good performance. But for the most part, it feels phoned in and overlong. Any attempt to turn it into a forgotten classic isn't worth it. The Killer Elite is an enjoyable action movie with not much below the surface.
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