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It's Saw meets The Bourne Identity meets The Hunger Games, only without the Metallica soundtrack you'd expect....
Well Go USA / 91 Minutes / 2012 / Unrated / Street Date: December 11, 2012
On paper, Kill 'Em All might play as The Hunger Games as seen through a Saw prism - this bloody actioner definitely draws from both of those franchises liberally. But what is so woefully apparent during this movie's impossibly long ninety-one minutes is just how boring killers can seem. Yeah, these guys and gals need to fight each other with everything they've got in order to get their lives back, but who would have guessed the act of doing so could seem so dull and boring?
Here's the setup: a cross-section of assassins and killers (Ammara Siripong, Tim Man, Johnny Messner) get drugged and wake up in a controlled location where they're alerted that they have to kill everybody else in the place if they want to go home again (that's where the film's subtle title fits in). Then, of course, once it gets down to the final matchup, the mastermind behind the whole affair shows his face - I won't ruin this paltry surprise for you - and that's that.
I'll be the first to admit that an action movie doesn't need to be smart or new to be good, but Kill 'Em All is all but completely mired in a dipshit mundanity that it never quite shakes. Some of the fighting here is pretty cool, and the movie's staccato style and fever preserve these moments appropriately, but after twenty minutes or so, I must admit to fending off a desire to hit the fast-forward button. I don't care what movies Kill 'Em All stole from: the filmmakers should have cobbled together something more entertaining than this.