Synopsis
Mike Locken is one of the principal members of a group of freelance spies. A significant portion of their work is for the CIA, and while on a case for them one of his friends turns on him and shoots him in the elbow and knee. His assignment, to protect someone, goes down in flames. He is nearly crippled, but with braces is able to again become mobile. For revenge as much as anything else, Mike goes after his ex-friend.
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Cast
- James CaanMike Locken
- Robert DuvallGeorge Hansen
- Arthur HillCap Collis
- Bo HopkinsJerome Miller
- MakoYuen Chung
- Burt YoungMac
- Gig YoungLawrence Weyburn
- Tom ClancyO'Leary
- Tiana AlexandraTommie
- Walter KelleyWalter
Recommendations
- 70
Time Out
Unmistakable Peckinpah - not a masterpiece, but enough to be going on with. - 70
The New Yorker
Peckinpah's poetic, corkscrew vision of the modern world, claustrophobically exciting. - 63
Chicago Sun-Times
Sam Peckinpah's The Killer Elite is directed and acted with a certain nice style, but it puts us through so many convolutions of the plot that finally we just don't care. - 63
Chicago Reader
Half self-parody, half deadly serious, The Killer Elite is an intriguingly enigmatic movie from one of our most committed and most maligned film artists. - 60
Empire
Peckinpah is never quite as comfortable with the high-rise terrain (including sloppy kung fu) as he is with the dusty rawhide of the West, but it still shows up the slick trigger-edits of new action cinema for the gutless vacuum it has become. - 50
The New York Times
Mr. Peckinpah is mannered and inventive, and these qualities both give the film its strengths and undermine it horrendously. Cleverness, for one thing, gets in the way of comprehensibility. - 50
TV Guide Magazine
Lesser Peckinpah, but fascinating nonetheless. - 50
Variety
The Killer Elite is an okay Sam Peckinpah actioner starring James Caan and Robert Duvall as two modern mercenaries who wind up stalking each other in a boringly complex double-cross plot [from the novel by Robert Rostand].
