My father wanted to watch it and I already knew it was going to be bad, but OMG it's incredible how painfully atrocious it was, it's not worth watching at all.
"Killing Season" is like going to watch a charity match between John McEnroe and Bjorn Borg. Two well-known stars who have a lot of achievements on their palmares and normally guarantee an exciting confrontation. Only you notice after some time that it's no longer the same as in their heydays. There's no punch in them anymore and they do their best but it's with a certain degree of unwillingness. It starts to look like a relay event and not a tough competitive match. The advantage tilts from one party to the other just to keep the tension high and eventually end the game in a draw to make it sporty and to satisfy everyone: the public, the sponsors and their own physical shape. It was something everybody was enthusiast and excited about, ultimately it results in an average event.
John Travolta and Robert De Niro were summoned to play in this "Tom and Jerry" film. The first time they appear together on the big screen . Travolta is a former Serbian soldier Emil Kovac with a huge beard, who was a member of the Scorpions, a paramilitary unit that was active during the Yugoslavian war and later stood trial for crimes committed in this war. He wants to take revenge on Benjamin Ford, who left him for dead at that time during an execution. De Niro plays Benjamin Ford, an ex-soldier who turned his back on the army after the dirty war in Bosnia and withdrew in the Appalachia mountains, far away from his family he's trying to avoid. He leads a life as a woodsman and spends his time with hiking, chopping wood and making pictures of the wildlife there. One day they meet and Kovac gives him a helping hand to get his jeep back on course. They end up together at the table in the cabin of Ford and enjoy a meal and a bottle of Jägermeister while they tell war stories . The invitation to go hunting together is on the table, and when Ford decides the next morning to go hunting for a deer and take it back home as a trophy. Eventually the situation evolves into a hunt after each other . As Kovac said in the beginning of the film with a heavy Slavic accent "I'm going hunting .... "
It's not the over-exaggerated and weird accent from Travolta that nerved me. Frankly, I didn't think it sounded so wrong or misplaced. But what bothered me was the ping-pong game between the two rivals. Every time we had to wait once again till one of the two would save himself out of a hopeless situation and holds the counter-party in a grip. It's obvious they are both hardened by their military past. An arrow right through your fibula and then subsequently hung up on it, is absolutely no impediment to start running through the woods afterwards for them. And being impaled on a door when an arrow got shot right through your two cheeks and then still start a monologue without losing your accent is also obvious. It was a bit overdone and predictable.
The applied tortures (painful to see, but not disgustingly filmed) I found appropriate, but ultimately I think it's used to make it a bit weightier and shocking. There were enough opportunities to deprive the opponent's life. Eventually I had the feeling that this was not the main goal anyway. It was just waiting for the finale to see what the outcome would ultimately be. Playing the hunter and hunted was done in a beautiful natural environment. And the cozy log cabin with a cozy fireplace and a nicely finished interior was also wonderful to watch. That was surely a positive thing here.
You can't call it a blockbuster , but then again it wasn't that terribly bad. Certainly there won't be any prizes awarded for this typical story. But if you look at what movies they played recently, Travolta in "Wild Hogs", "Hairspray" and "Old Dogs" and De Niro in "The Big Wedding Big Wedding", "The Family" and "American Hustle", then it's quite a relief to see these two legendary actors play such roles again. I'm sure this macho film, in which the transition from revenge to peace neatly expires, will appear on the summary of these two Hollywood stars in small print and it will end up in oblivion as a fait divers.
More reviews at http://opinion-as-a-moviefreak.blogspot.be/
Very marginal movie. Doesn't convince as an action or drama movie. Actor try their best but just don't convince. Also editing and directing is just.....marginal. Not bad but very forgettable!!!
It's not only Benjamin Ford, played by Robert De Niro who has a limp. Killing Season quite literally limped into theaters, only playing in 12 and brought in a grand $39 881. KS might as well have just gone direct-to-video but with two one-time big-time actors, what's to be done? Killing Season is very much De Niro and Travolta's vehicle but Millennium Entertainment clearly had no faith in the film. They quietly released it to a few unsuspecting poor souls to save a bit of face and pushed it on the Blu-ray/DVD market.
Mark Steven Johnson does not have a very great record as a director. Simon Birch is no more than OK and When in Rome seems like any other cheap rom-com. I haven't seen it yet but that's my assumption. The two glaring miscues that he has though are Daredevil and Ghost Rider. Daredevil is just slightly better if it's in the Director's Cut version but these are two great examples of how not to make a superhero movie. Can we really trust him to make a worthwhile post-war action/drama piece?
Retired Colonel Benjamin Ford is a recluse who lives in a cabin in the woods. He fought during the Bosnian war as a NATO operative and is haunted by his past. An old enemy by the name of Emil Kovac (John Travolta) who was part of the Scorpions, responsible for some pretty awful atrocities during the war, is alive and out for revenge. He gets a hold of some old, secret NATO files and makes the trip into the Appalachian Mountains where Ford spends his days. What happens next I wonder?
Killing Season is part action movie so I'll start there. The flashbacks to the Bosnian War are horrifyingly done complete with easy-way-out shaky cam and a dumb filter which is meant to convey being in the past. When people get shot, CGI is quite obvious and ruins the effect. Hand-to-hand combat finds the camera in too close and is most likely an attempt to hide any fight choreography deficiencies. Really there's no reason to be excited or tense during any of these scenes at all. Simply put, Killing Season is not very well crafted when it comes to action.
The film attempts to explore the pain and suffering of both men following the Bosnian war and how they try to deal with it. Ford tries to distance himself from it while Emil never stops thinking about it. Emil's main goal is to hear what Benjamin Ford has to say for himself about his actions by torture if need be and then to kill him. The story just devolves into both men having the upper hand, torturing the other and then switching roles. It's more comical than deep and neither actor is capable of carrying this movie to be better than it really is.
I kind of feel bad for John Travolta because I really do believe that he's trying here. He puts on an awful Serbian accent that kills any believability and he's forced to don this ridiculous looking beard from hell. Robert De Niro on the other hand gives the same asleep at the wheel performance he's now known for. One thing I want to say is that it's obvious Robert De Niro is in pretty good shape. I'd even argue that he's in better shape than John Travolta who's ten years his junior.
Killing Season makes light of what happened during the Bosnian War. Besides two past their prime leads to plaster on DVD covers, it doesn't offer anything worthwhile in terms of the impact of the war or the psychological workings of its combatants. Instead it just delivers a bit of torture porn and an excruciatingly godawful accent.
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Comments 1 - 10 of 10
Shidan
My father wanted to watch it and I already knew it was going to be bad, but OMG it's incredible how painfully atrocious it was, it's not worth watching at all.Salma
Horrible :/Louis Mazzini
Utter crap. Don't waste your time.modelno1
Travolta's Serbian is horrific and don't get me started on his accent, it makes the movie barely watchable.rals
wow.. this really sucksikkegoemikke
“Hunting. I am going hunting”"Killing Season" is like going to watch a charity match between John McEnroe and Bjorn Borg. Two well-known stars who have a lot of achievements on their palmares and normally guarantee an exciting confrontation. Only you notice after some time that it's no longer the same as in their heydays. There's no punch in them anymore and they do their best but it's with a certain degree of unwillingness. It starts to look like a relay event and not a tough competitive match. The advantage tilts from one party to the other just to keep the tension high and eventually end the game in a draw to make it sporty and to satisfy everyone: the public, the sponsors and their own physical shape. It was something everybody was enthusiast and excited about, ultimately it results in an average event.
John Travolta and Robert De Niro were summoned to play in this "Tom and Jerry" film. The first time they appear together on the big screen . Travolta is a former Serbian soldier Emil Kovac with a huge beard, who was a member of the Scorpions, a paramilitary unit that was active during the Yugoslavian war and later stood trial for crimes committed in this war. He wants to take revenge on Benjamin Ford, who left him for dead at that time during an execution. De Niro plays Benjamin Ford, an ex-soldier who turned his back on the army after the dirty war in Bosnia and withdrew in the Appalachia mountains, far away from his family he's trying to avoid. He leads a life as a woodsman and spends his time with hiking, chopping wood and making pictures of the wildlife there. One day they meet and Kovac gives him a helping hand to get his jeep back on course. They end up together at the table in the cabin of Ford and enjoy a meal and a bottle of Jägermeister while they tell war stories . The invitation to go hunting together is on the table, and when Ford decides the next morning to go hunting for a deer and take it back home as a trophy. Eventually the situation evolves into a hunt after each other . As Kovac said in the beginning of the film with a heavy Slavic accent "I'm going hunting .... "
It's not the over-exaggerated and weird accent from Travolta that nerved me. Frankly, I didn't think it sounded so wrong or misplaced. But what bothered me was the ping-pong game between the two rivals. Every time we had to wait once again till one of the two would save himself out of a hopeless situation and holds the counter-party in a grip. It's obvious they are both hardened by their military past. An arrow right through your fibula and then subsequently hung up on it, is absolutely no impediment to start running through the woods afterwards for them. And being impaled on a door when an arrow got shot right through your two cheeks and then still start a monologue without losing your accent is also obvious. It was a bit overdone and predictable.
The applied tortures (painful to see, but not disgustingly filmed) I found appropriate, but ultimately I think it's used to make it a bit weightier and shocking. There were enough opportunities to deprive the opponent's life. Eventually I had the feeling that this was not the main goal anyway. It was just waiting for the finale to see what the outcome would ultimately be. Playing the hunter and hunted was done in a beautiful natural environment. And the cozy log cabin with a cozy fireplace and a nicely finished interior was also wonderful to watch. That was surely a positive thing here.
You can't call it a blockbuster , but then again it wasn't that terribly bad. Certainly there won't be any prizes awarded for this typical story. But if you look at what movies they played recently, Travolta in "Wild Hogs", "Hairspray" and "Old Dogs" and De Niro in "The Big Wedding Big Wedding", "The Family" and "American Hustle", then it's quite a relief to see these two legendary actors play such roles again. I'm sure this macho film, in which the transition from revenge to peace neatly expires, will appear on the summary of these two Hollywood stars in small print and it will end up in oblivion as a fait divers.
More reviews at http://opinion-as-a-moviefreak.blogspot.be/
Earring72
Very marginal movie. Doesn't convince as an action or drama movie. Actor try their best but just don't convince. Also editing and directing is just.....marginal. Not bad but very forgettable!!!CinemaDump
It's not only Benjamin Ford, played by Robert De Niro who has a limp. Killing Season quite literally limped into theaters, only playing in 12 and brought in a grand $39 881. KS might as well have just gone direct-to-video but with two one-time big-time actors, what's to be done? Killing Season is very much De Niro and Travolta's vehicle but Millennium Entertainment clearly had no faith in the film. They quietly released it to a few unsuspecting poor souls to save a bit of face and pushed it on the Blu-ray/DVD market.Mark Steven Johnson does not have a very great record as a director. Simon Birch is no more than OK and When in Rome seems like any other cheap rom-com. I haven't seen it yet but that's my assumption. The two glaring miscues that he has though are Daredevil and Ghost Rider. Daredevil is just slightly better if it's in the Director's Cut version but these are two great examples of how not to make a superhero movie. Can we really trust him to make a worthwhile post-war action/drama piece?
Retired Colonel Benjamin Ford is a recluse who lives in a cabin in the woods. He fought during the Bosnian war as a NATO operative and is haunted by his past. An old enemy by the name of Emil Kovac (John Travolta) who was part of the Scorpions, responsible for some pretty awful atrocities during the war, is alive and out for revenge. He gets a hold of some old, secret NATO files and makes the trip into the Appalachian Mountains where Ford spends his days. What happens next I wonder?
Killing Season is part action movie so I'll start there. The flashbacks to the Bosnian War are horrifyingly done complete with easy-way-out shaky cam and a dumb filter which is meant to convey being in the past. When people get shot, CGI is quite obvious and ruins the effect. Hand-to-hand combat finds the camera in too close and is most likely an attempt to hide any fight choreography deficiencies. Really there's no reason to be excited or tense during any of these scenes at all. Simply put, Killing Season is not very well crafted when it comes to action.
The film attempts to explore the pain and suffering of both men following the Bosnian war and how they try to deal with it. Ford tries to distance himself from it while Emil never stops thinking about it. Emil's main goal is to hear what Benjamin Ford has to say for himself about his actions by torture if need be and then to kill him. The story just devolves into both men having the upper hand, torturing the other and then switching roles. It's more comical than deep and neither actor is capable of carrying this movie to be better than it really is.
I kind of feel bad for John Travolta because I really do believe that he's trying here. He puts on an awful Serbian accent that kills any believability and he's forced to don this ridiculous looking beard from hell. Robert De Niro on the other hand gives the same asleep at the wheel performance he's now known for. One thing I want to say is that it's obvious Robert De Niro is in pretty good shape. I'd even argue that he's in better shape than John Travolta who's ten years his junior.
Killing Season makes light of what happened during the Bosnian War. Besides two past their prime leads to plaster on DVD covers, it doesn't offer anything worthwhile in terms of the impact of the war or the psychological workings of its combatants. Instead it just delivers a bit of torture porn and an excruciatingly godawful accent.
5/10
DaniloFreiles
Sadico ma bello.Ralf
That's also the movie's only major flaw if you ask me.