KILL’ EM ALL
US, 2017, 96 minutes, Colour.
Jean- Claude van Damme, Autumn Reeser, Peter Stormare, Maria Conchita Alonso, Kris van Damme.
Directed by Peter Malota.
By this film, Jean- Claude van Damme had been making action thrillers for three decades. He certainly looks older and somewhat the worse for wear, although that is part of the plot of this film.
This is a film for Jean- Claude van Damme fans and those interested in kickboxing.
The film offers some detail of the background of the Balkan Peninsula in the 1990s, the changes with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the dividing of the countries and the civil wars, the role of the Serbs, massacres, gangsters and politicians, the desire for revenge.
The screenplay is very complicated, moving forwards and backwards in time, audiences needing to pay attention.
When it goes back, it offers the background of Philip, a young boy in the Balkans, a lyrical scene of the family, his father being shot. His mother has to get him out and he has a patron who trains him in the martial arts. And he has a desire for revenge. He becomes attached to the gangster-politician who murdered his father with the intention to get revenge and kill him. However, he acts as one of the politician’s hitmen, along with several others in the group (one played by van Damme’s son – and having some fights with him on screen).
The focus is a young woman, a nurse, Suzanne (played by Autumn Reeser). She is being interrogated by two FBI agents in Los Angeles as a consequence of an attack on the gangster politician in the hospital and suspicions about Philip. The interrogators are played by Peter Stormare and Maria Conchita Alonso.
The interrogation goes badly and well, alternating, seemingly dependent on the moods of the interrogators who are trying to find out what actually happened, put it all in chronological order. (And chronological order is not the key mark of the film.)
Which means then there are details of Philip and his entry to the hospital, thugs pursuing him and some shootouts as well as kickboxing bouts, the nurse with him, his protecting her, their gradually going upstairs – where Philip is able to kill his enemy. He then escapes, despite being wounded. The interrogators, thinking that they have the story, let the nurse go and there is another flashback to show that she was Philip’s associate, taking a uniform from a nurse, getting out the building, removing her wig and driving off with Philip.
Certainly complicated – but for those who like this kind of action movie.
