Snap Judgements: Killers

Tom Selleck's mustache deserves better. That's all I kept thinking. Look at it up there, out acting the vapid Ashton Kutcher and flat out painful Katherine Heigl. Not even Selleck himself seems to be having a good time. The very first excruciating scene sets the bar for just how unfunny the rest of this poor man's Mr. and Mrs. Smith was going to be, and at every attempt all involved do their best to limbo underneath it.

Heigl, looking completely lost as if she's in a post-Greys Anatomy fog, plays Jennifer Kornfeldt. No, Jenny. No wait, it's Jen. Just Jen. Here comes the lame "Well, Just Jen" joke. Ah, there it is. Jen has been recently dumped by her ex, and now finds herself on a potential death march of a vacation with her parents(Selleck and the wasted Catherine O'Hara) to France. There she bumps into Spencer Aimes(the charisma-free Ashton Kutcher), and the two wade through some stilted dialogue and hit it off like gangbusters. Of course he neglects to tell her that he's a mercenary, who just happened to be in France on a mission. It doesn't really matter because he's tired of the hitman rat race, and gives it all up in order to marry Jen.

Three years later and the two have settled into the groove of wedded boredom. That is until Spencer's past comes calling, with every paid merc in town looking to bust a cap in his arse. And when I say everybody, I mean everybody. Practically a dozen characters are thrown at us in rapid fire succession, none of them remotely likable, and at first I thought it was an attempt to hide how unwatchable Heigl and Kutcher are. Nope, it turns out every single person Jen and Spencer has ever known is a sleeper agent looking to kill them. Original? Sorta. Stupid? Absolutely.

Killers fails in every way imaginable. As a comedy, it's a completely laugh deficient exercise. As an action flick, there's not a hint of real tension or stakes. At certain points it becomes painfully obvious that writers Bob Derosa and Ted Griffin are digging for ways to fill time as they throw in warmed over pregnancy cliches(she's got mood swings and the munchies!) and arguments that spring up from out of nowhere. Speaking of arguments, I'd like to have a word with the folks who greenlit this thing.

Kutcher, who produced this drek, does his best to sell what he has to know is a truly heinous script. I'm certainly no fan of his, but even I'm amazed by how little command he has on screen. How does anybody believe anything that comes out of his mouth? Where was Leslie Nielsen? Even he'd be a more believable hitman. I really want to like Heigl. She's hot, bubbly, and seemingly incapable of picking out a good role for herself. Oh wait, she did once in Judd Apatow's Knocked Up. Oh...no, she then bashed that flick soon afterwards. My bad. If she doesn't have anything to say about this turd then I'm going to start questioning her intellectual honesty. Avoid!