A support group of killers is held regularly. The participants sit in a circle of trust and share their transgressions.
“Killers Anonymous” promises much in its trailer, especially when you take into consideration its three lead stars, Gary Oldman, Tommy Flanagan, and Jessica Alba. In reality, though, only Mr. Flanagan continuously appears throughout its 95-minute runtime, with Mr. Oldman making the occasional appearance (gotta earn that paycheck) and Ms. Alba only showing up in the first 10 minutes but I get it, as an indie filmmaker myself, I understand the importance of attracting big-name stars to your film, it’s just very misleading when only one of the three actors promoted appears throughout the entire film. But hey, that’s Hollywood!
“Killers Anonymous” tells the story of a group of assassins who meet up occasionally at a secret hiding hole in London to talk about their addiction in taking the lives of others. At this particular session, a new face joins the group, Alice (Rhyon Nicole Brown), and everyone else is wary of her since she is very reluctant to talk about herself. As the evening progresses, we discover how and why each of the participants became obsessed with murder and eventually, at the behest of one of her associates, Alice finally opens up. Shortly after, an American senator, John Kyle (Sam Hazeldine), appears, much to everyone’s amazement as it has been announced all over the TV and radio that he was assassinated earlier that day in London.
When pressed why an American senator is sitting with them instead of lying on a slab in a morgue, he informs them that he is deep undercover with the CIA and that they organize the KA meetings as a way to recruit new talent. All of the group denies ever having worked for the CIA but they are each reminded of a particular kill they were assigned and quickly realize that they were secretly working for the CIA, unbeknownst to them at the time. When John confronts Joanna (MyAnna Buring), the group leader, and asks her why he was shot as the original plan initially only required a near-miss assassination attempt, she vehemently denies knowing any different and as a result, the group begins to tear themselves apart as fear and suspicion emerge at the thought of someone else behind-the-scenes calling the shots and any and all trust they had for each other goes out the window.
Joanna finally steps in and puts an end to all the deception and suspicion and tells the group that the evening had been a test and that a new boss has been assigned to Killers Anonymous and they wanted to check out the group, face-to-face. The new boss, one of the group members, informs those who have been chosen to continue working within the organization, to make their way outside, while the remaining members are free to leave at any time but things don’t go according to plan and the entire group turns on each other in a fight to the death.
Gary Oldman goes through the motions of an ambiguous character that never really has much to do onscreen other than spout the occasional line of dialogue and Ms. Alba is wasted in a role that could have been played by anybody. Tommy Flanagan is the real star here but even with that, he never gets much to do. As an ensemble piece, characters enter scenes, then disappear, then more appear and quickly leave, and this becomes the norm for the whole 95-minute runtime. While there are more than enough characters to keep us captivated, unfortunately, the script doesn’t offer them anything even remotely compelling and by the time the movie ends, you realize you never cared about any of them or their predicaments because none of them were given enough of a backstory for us to gravitate towards. So sad to see a top-notch cast wasted in such an uninspired film.
Available on Blu-ray™ (plus Digital), DVD, and Digital August 27th
Don’t waste your time with this movie.
Thanks for the review