Review: Kill List
Sometimes being a hit-man just isn’t straight forward.
Imagine if Robin Hardy’s 1973 film The Wicker Man was locked in a dungeon and forced to mate with a Mike Leigh kitchen sink social drama, well the result of such fornication would give you Kill List.
Directed by Ben Wheatley (Down Terrace), Kill List is the story of Jay (Neil Maskell) a former soldier, who now with best friend Gal (Michael Smiley) are freelance hitmen for hire. With Jay out of work for the last 8 months, debts piling up, his marriage to wife Shel (Myanna Buring) teetering on the edge of divorce and his own mental state appearing to be extremely fragile, he accepts Gal’s offer of one last job. This is after Jay and Shel’s attempt to host a dinner party for Gal and his mysterious new girlfriend Fiona (Emma Fryer) break down into argument and disaster. Once Jay is forced to provide blood on the contract of his employment for his future killings, the line between reality and paranoid delusions become blurred as Jay’s mind and humanity begin to unravel
Kill List is actually a pretty difficult film to spoil, it’s a film that uses tone and imagery more than straight forward narrative. It’s a visceral films, that plays with the viewers senses. For every scene of a father enjoying time playing with his son, they quickly followed by imagines of pain, brutality or anger. Kill List never allows the audience to relax or feel comfortable. It revels in the unreliable nature of its narrator and in pushing the audience to the very edge.
The performances of Smiley and Maskell are superb. Aided by the handheld style Wheatley employs and allowing the actors to improvise, the actors create hit-men that couldn’t be further away from Quentin Tarentino’s creations in Pulp Fiction. Smiley’s Gal uses humour to ground the film, even making his character sympathetic. He’s has his rules and his morals and will stick to them no matter what, constantly tries to keep Jay in touch with reality and his own humanity. Maskell’s performance of Jay is stellar, breaking free of previous roles such as Football Factory, Maskell’s twisted mind and sense of morality powers the film along.
Kill List is a film at leaves as many questions open as it answers, allowing the audience to interpret the imagery in a way that makes sense to them. It’s a rubix cube of a film, designed to manipulate and deceive the audience. Kill List is an intelligent yet brutal film, one which wears its influences on its sleeve like a badge of honour and stands as one of the most devastatingly uncomfortable films of the year. Like Hunter S. Thompson said “Buy the ticket, take the ride”; Ben Wheately has created a film which will be argued about by film fans for years to come and there is no greater compliment to be had than that.
Down with Film rating 9/10
Posted on December 12, 2011, in Reviews and tagged ben, Burling, Emma, Fryer, Kill, List, Man, Maskell, Michael, Myanna, Neil, Review, Smiley, The, Wheatley, Wicker. Bookmark the permalink. 2 Comments.
Down With Film 
I am glad you enjoyed this matey. I wasn’t as taken as you were by it. I found it a little frustrating and not as shocking and disturbing as I was hoping for.
The blu ray is a stunning piece of sound engineering though with a HD sound track that makes you want to vomit.
I really enjoyed it too. I liked the references to Hammer Horror as well as more recent Brit horrors like Eden Lake and Dead Man’s Shoes. Although you’re never going to like a pair of ruthless and rather nasty hit men, I was continually engaged by the protagonist’s wavering mental state and the promise of something suitably nasty come the film’s end.