On DVD and BLU RAY - "Killing Season" - Those looking to watch a rather tired-looking and embarrassed Robert De Niro and John Travolta, the latter sporting an awful chin-strap beard and wobbly Serbian accent, as they ramble aimlessly through the woods trying unsuccessfully to kill one another should look no further than this tortuous misfire from the Director (Mark Steven Johnson) of other such tortuous misfires as Daredevil and Ghost Rider. How someone could fuck up such a simplistic tale is something of a wonder, but here it is in all it's gory, idiotic glory. Yes, there's a myriad of reasons this didn't play in theaters...
The majority of the film's first act is promising, with the two hunters meeting by happenstance (at least one of them believes so) and proceeding to get drunk while shooting the shit about common interests. The narrative then devolves into a tediously repetitive and wholly inept cat and mouse revenge tale with both men revealed as former soldiers on opposite sides of the Bosnian war.
One of the two captures the other, tortures him for a short while in interesting ways, only to have the tortured turn the tables and get the better of his captor- wash, rinse, repeat for the remainder of the film. It's just plain disappointingly dumb. A sequence in which one of the two stars takes an arrow to the face is particularly bewildering- passing through the fleshy portion of the unfortunate's mouth, the arrow somehow pins him to a wooden door... with the damage already done, why doesn't such a hardened former warrior just slide his face off of the arrow's shaft? I've always found it funny to watch Hollywood's version of hunters talking loudly while on the hunt- it reeks of outright ignorance. Lastly, it's pretty damned impractical (or hare-brained) to choose a recurve bow as a weapon of choice while hunting another human.
This is both former A-listers in paycheck mode. De Niro should be ashamed while I could have sworn that Travolta's accent intermittently broke into Vinnie Barbarino territory- he's coming dangerously close to returning to his pre-Pulp Fiction slump. This film was originally envisioned as a reunion vehicle to feature former Face/Off co-stars Travolta and Nic Cage, but Cage dropped out... consider the irony there...
Either skip it or don't spend a dime to watch it- it's one of the year's worst.
3.5 out of 10
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