Killerman

Bits with killer dogs, a machete and a late-inning plot revelation do little to recoup what was lost, and what could have been a tight crime thriller drags to the nearly two-hour mark.

Writer-director Malik Bader recalls '70s crime dramas in his brutal thriller about a memory-impaired money launderer pursued by dirty cops.

Thanks to Bader's clever plotting and fruity dialogue - as well as strong supporting players - this grimy picture climaxes more satisfyingly than expected.

Killerman takes its influences and synthesizes them into an increasing rare thing: a movie that doesn't aspire to any greater heights than where it lands: squarely in the middle of the August dumping ground.

A movie made by men to entice other men aching for those manly outdated movies "they don't make anymore," where distorted alpha masculinity was solely portrayed through vicious violence, gratuitous sex, and impenetrable coldness.

An exhilarating, audacious crime thriller, provided you go along with the ride.

Hemsworth does well with the sparse tools the narrative gives him, making a genuinely charismatic anti-hero.

Killerman has a few twists up its sleeve, the type of over-the-top nonsense that's sincerely entertaining.

Nothing is especially new here, but Hemsworth is sympathetic, oddly cast or not, and the villains are so odious in their smiling arrogance that I wanted to see them punished.

Killerman is the story of how an antihero is created, but without the mysticism or emotion of his cousin by profession, John Wick. [Full review in Spanish]