by Nick Schager
What's new is always old, and in this recurring column, Nick will be taking a look at the classic genre movies that have influenced today's new releases. In honor of the Jason Statham-headlined film of the same name, this week it's Sam Peckinpah's 1975 The Killer Elite.
Following the brutally honest and financially unprofitable Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, legendary tough-guy director Sam Peckinpah turned to The Killer Elite as a means of reestablishing his box-office clout, an attempt that—as a result of his disdain for studio interference and mounting substance abuse issues—was more or less doomed from the outset. Pressured to toe the line by United Artists (the studio that had taken a bath on Alfredo Garcia), Peckinpah rebelled through sheer, unadulterated disinterest, tackling his adaptation of Robert Rostand's novel "Monkey in the Middle" with a who-cares attitude that permeates...
What's new is always old, and in this recurring column, Nick will be taking a look at the classic genre movies that have influenced today's new releases. In honor of the Jason Statham-headlined film of the same name, this week it's Sam Peckinpah's 1975 The Killer Elite.
Following the brutally honest and financially unprofitable Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, legendary tough-guy director Sam Peckinpah turned to The Killer Elite as a means of reestablishing his box-office clout, an attempt that—as a result of his disdain for studio interference and mounting substance abuse issues—was more or less doomed from the outset. Pressured to toe the line by United Artists (the studio that had taken a bath on Alfredo Garcia), Peckinpah rebelled through sheer, unadulterated disinterest, tackling his adaptation of Robert Rostand's novel "Monkey in the Middle" with a who-cares attitude that permeates...
- 9/20/2011
- GreenCine Daily
ComingSoon has the first look photos from director Gary McKendry's upcoming action thriller The Killer Elite that stars Jason Statham, Robert De Niro and Clive Owen. Owen appears fighting with Statham in an exclusive Collider image.
While The Killer Elite seems to borrow its title from the 1975 movie from director Sam Peckinpah, the movie's plot comes from author Sir Ranulph Fiennes' 1991 novel The Feather Men. In the movie, Statham plays an ex-special ops agent who comes out of retirement to save his mentor (De Niro) and must take down three assassins led by Owen. Fiennes claims that his book was based on true events, as it followed the assassinations of four former Special Air Service (Sas) by the hands of a hit squad called "The Clinic." A group of vigilantes known as "The Feather Men" go after the assassins. Peckinpah's Killer Elite was also about a private mercenary group,...
While The Killer Elite seems to borrow its title from the 1975 movie from director Sam Peckinpah, the movie's plot comes from author Sir Ranulph Fiennes' 1991 novel The Feather Men. In the movie, Statham plays an ex-special ops agent who comes out of retirement to save his mentor (De Niro) and must take down three assassins led by Owen. Fiennes claims that his book was based on true events, as it followed the assassinations of four former Special Air Service (Sas) by the hands of a hit squad called "The Clinic." A group of vigilantes known as "The Feather Men" go after the assassins. Peckinpah's Killer Elite was also about a private mercenary group,...
- 6/20/2011
- by Ryan Gowland
- Reelzchannel.com
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