The Killer's Game (#599)

Described as an action-comedy, THE KILLER'S GAME hits the target of both descriptions. It has an incredible amount of ultra-violent action, and it is funny and farcical.  It stars Dave Bautista, whom I guess I had seen before (after reading his biography), but who I did not recognize.  He's a heavily tattooed likable bruiser (he had been a world-champion wrestler earlier in his career), and I thought he did a terrific job as Joe Flood, a successful assassin, who meets and rescues the love of his life in a dance theater after he kills half a dozen people.  His handler or agent, the one who gives him all his assignments, is played beautifully by Ben Kingsley, and despite the seeming sordidness of their jobs, they come across as decent and genuine friends.  We learn later that although assassination is their business, they only are involved with killing criminals, and Joe does a lot of that.  Joe wants to quit because he is having severe headaches and other debilitating symptoms, and he is diagnosed as having a rare always fatal disease and has three months to live.  He arranges to have his girlfriend receive his estate and asks his handler to arrange for him to be assassinated, but the handler refuses.  Joe goes to a competitor, the daughter of a former enemy whom he had killed, to arrange for him to be killed.  She is as quirky and evil as can be and assigns his demise to one after another incompetent assassins.  Believe it or not, and despite the never-ending violence and killing, I enjoyed the action and the comedy.  There was no audience rating and, naturally, the critics disagreed with me and only 29% gave it a thumbs up.  They don't know fun when they see it.