Browse all reviews by letter     A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z 0 - 9

Australia 2015
Directed by
Kriv Stenders
85 minutes
Rated MA

Reviewed by
Sharon Hurst
2 stars

Kill Me Three Times

Synopsis: Jack Taylor (Callan Mulvey) suspects his wife Alice (Alice Braga) to be having an affair. So he hires hitman Charlie Wolfe (Simon Pegg) to despatch Alice. Meantime local dentist Nathan Webb (Sullivan Stapleton) owes huge gambling debts and hatches a plan to make it look like his wife Lucy (Theresa Palmer) has died in a car crash to collect the insurance money. But the convoluted plan hatched by the Webbs involves using a dead Alice as a stand-in for Lucy. As dastardly deeds progress, the body count mounts.

Kriv Stenders made a beautiful and much-loved film with Red Dog. Boxing Day was also a strong work, dealing with the woes of an indigenous ex-con. Unfortunately this Tarantino-esque crime comedy wanna-be doesn’t rank with those efforts.

The film begins stylishly with terrific retro titles in pop-art patterns and Western style twanging guitar riffs that bode well. But by the end of the film the guitar theme feels too derivative and repetitive, the gratuitous killings and the geysers of blood, egregious, and ultimately I didn’t really care enough for the characters to give a hoot what happened to them. Plot wise, from the get-go everything is fairly muddled, and why we need an opening scene of Wolfe tracking down a hapless victim  (a waste of Steve Le Marquand’s talents) over a sand dune, only to viciously wound, then kill him, I don’t know – unless it is to establish that cruelty rules in Charlie’s world.

Most of these dudes are familiar stereotypes, with a couple of exceptions. Probably Pegg is too much of a  lightweight to be this seemingly amiable but ruthless contract killer, but I did get the occasional  black laugh from his cool demeanour and delight in murder and mayhem, and from his constant voyeuristic peering through binoculars to see what the Webbs are up to. I found Theresa Palmer a potential strong screen presence, but her role here is underwritten, and we never get a sense of Lucy’s true character (if there is one!) As for Stapleton’s Nathan – well he totally failed to convince me of his toothsome credentials. Taylor looks the part as Alice’s brutal scum-bucket husband, however Braga stands out as the most believable and empathetic character. Also ranking in the passable stakes is Liam Hemsworth (Chris’s lesser-known brother) as Dylan, the local car mechanic. Bryan Brown is given little to work with as a one-note corrupt cop.

The producers have certainly employed a good cinematographer in Geoffrey Simpson (Sleeping Beauty, Romulus, My Father amongst others), and the setting in a WA coastal town looks appealing, but there is little more than cursory pleasure to be had from this good-looking but underwhelming copy-cat film.

Available on Digital, DVD & Blu-Ray on 9 September'

 

 

back

Want more about this film?

search youtube  search wikipedia  

Want something different?

random vintage best worst