If you see Joe Flood coming, you should count yourself among his luckier victims. Most don’t get that honor before he kills them.
Even Joe’s fellow hitmen begrudgingly describe him as “the most prolific professional hitman in Europe.” But despite Joe’s ability to kill someone in innumerable ways, the most pivotal moment in his life was when he chose to save a life.
That’s how he met Maize, a dancer at an opera in Budapest. When the opera descended into chaos due to a firefight between security and criminal henchmen, Maize got trampled by her fellow dancers as they all rushed to the exit. And Joe, seeing her on the ground, grabbed her hand and pulled her out of the building. He chose not to explain that his assassination of a criminal spectator was the reason for the firefight to begin with.
The two quickly fell in love, and Joe began to imagine a life with Maize—one where he didn’t have to hide his true occupation … perhaps one where he could even retire from his violent profession.
But then Joe goes to the doctor due to increasingly frequent headaches. And not long after, his doctor tells him that he’s got Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a neurodegenerative brain disorder that will, even in a best-case scenario, cripple and kill him within the next few months.
The news devastates Joe. So he decides that he’d rather go out on his own terms than wait for the disease to take him out. But he also knows that his life insurance won’t pay out to Maize if he commits suicide. That’s why Joe requests a hit to be put out on him, so that Maize would get the money.
But just as the request goes through, Joe gets a call from his doctor—one telling him that the lab handling his test results accidentally mixed his up with another patient’s. As it turns out, Joe doesn’t have Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and there’s nothing to stop him from living a long and happy life.
Well, apart from the paid killers coming after him, that is.
Joe’s handler, Zvi, offers him advice about how he can build a strong relationship with Maize: Even if he plans on leaving his work as an assassin, he needs to tell her about it if he ever hopes to have a strong, serious relationship. “If she finds out later, the trust will be gone,” Zvi says.
So, despite the nature of Joe’s occupation, we can’t deny that Zvi gives good advice for any relationship: Honesty is key. And on a similar note, there’s something to be said about how a loving relationship can cause us to want to give up our old ways and change for the better.
Zvi and Joe maintain a rather nice friendship, and Zvi goes out of his way to help Joe in multiple ways.
And while it’s not the easiest to come up with positive things to say about a professional killer, we are told that Joe only ever hunted criminals and left innocents unharmed, arguably making him relatively more noble than some of his deranged peers.
At one point, Joe and Maize arrive in a Catholic church and ask a priest there to marry them. The man asks if Joe is Catholic, and when Joe responds that his mother was, the priest quips, “Ah, so guilt by association.” The priest says that Joe must go to confession before he will marry the couple. But after hearing all of Joe’s murderous confessions, the priest says he’s “not sure [he’s] qualified to pardon all of this.” Joe begs the priest to do so—claiming that God must be giving him a second chance at a new life—and the priest relents.
In requesting a hit on himself, Joe says he has lived by the sword and wants to go out the same way, a reference to Matthew 26:52. A crime boss says that he tries to “leave judgment to God” and assist Him by “arranging the meeting.”
A hitman’s title card uses a Christian cross in place of a ‘t’ in his name. When Joe references looking for a doctor for his condition, someone suggests visiting a shaman. A woman asks Joe if he’s calling “from heaven or hell?”
A couple of women are seen naked, and their breasts and rears are visible. Two other women are assassins, and we’re initially introduced to them as they pole dance in lingerie. They make sexual quips, and it’s implied that they’re in a lesbian relationship with each other. Joe and Maize passionately kiss, and it’s implied that they have sex.
A woman gives Maize advice on getting Joe to forgive her that involves being a “freak in his bed” and performing oral or anal sex. When Joe asks what they’re talking about, Maize says that she’ll show him later.
A woman grabs a man’s crotch through his pants. Men are seen in their underwear, and women wear revealing dresses. We hear references to other sexual actions. Someone mistakes Maize for a stripper. A woman admits to being aroused.
Unsurprisingly, The Killer’s Game contains a whole lot of killing.
We see dozens of deaths onscreen, men and women included. People are shot, stabbed, impaled, blown up and dismembered, and every death comes with a liberal amount of blood and gore. Some of these violent ends can be quite gruesome, too, and the worst are listed below.
A female assassin’s neck is forcefully dragged across broken glass to cut her throat. One target is ripped in half when he’s chained to two motorcycles pulling opposite directions. A man is blown up, and we see his entrails littering the floor. Another person’s leg gets snapped in an unnatural direction. Someone stomps on an attacker’s head. Kill shots result in exploding heads. A circular knife is embedded deep into a man’s skull, nearly dividing his head in half. Men beat women savagely, sometimes fatally. Someone uses the burning hand of a dead man to light his cigar.
Those who do survive still face painful injuries, including a man who gets knocked unconscious by a branch and a woman who gets trampled by a panicking crowd. We’re told about someone who trafficked women before he had been killed. We hear and see some references to suicide.
The f-word is used more than 50 times, including a couple of instances that are preceded by “mother” (one of which is uttered by a priest). The s-word is used about 20 times. Likewise, profanities such as “a–,” “b–ch,” “d–n,” “d–k,” “h—,” “p-ss,” “b–tard,” “t-ts” and “pr-ck” are all used. We also hear the British vulgarities “b-llocks,” “tw-t” and “bloody.” God’s name is used in vain twice, and Jesus’ name is taken in vain once.
Also of note, the c-word is used three times as Scottish slang, a culture where it’s not considered a harsh, crude vulgarity but rather used as a term of endearment. (That said, some might not be familiar with that very specific use of a word that’s very offensive in virtually any other context.)
Characters drink liquor, beer and wine. Joe admits that he’s drunk at one point, and we see him use liquor to swallow prescription pills. Two Scottish assassins drink and drive.
A hitman kills a group of drug dealers, and we see bricks of cocaine. Likewise, the same drug spells out someone’s name.
A couple of comments are made about a man who apparently defecated in his pants.
One hitman dances to music and slices throats with knives strapped to his boots. A duo terrorizes its targets with coordinated motorcycle attacks. Intoxicated and bickering Scottish brothers beats their marks like they’re engaging in a barroom brawl.
And all of them and more are interested in claiming the millions of dollars for killing Joe Flood.
If there’s any lesson for Joe to learn, it’s that patience is a virtue. Had he waited a day or two, he’d never have gotten himself into this blood-soaked mess. If there’s a lesson for the hit men chasing him to learn, it’s target practice. Because despite Joe often running away from them in a straight line, they’ll scarcely ever manage to hit the man.
Chalk it up to The Killer’s Game not taking itself very seriously: Despite the subject material, the comedy makes plenty of time for laughs. But it also has a whole lot of time for gruesome deaths, many of which garnered distinct “nails on a chalkboard” groans and winces from the audience members in the theater with me.
But it’s silly to go into a film about a hitman and not expect someone to get hit, man. And other elements of the criminal world take shots at the audience, too, including female nudity, crude language and drug use.
Did some of the jokes in The Killer’s Game land? Sure. But this game’s humor isn’t worth playing by its unsavory rules.
Kennedy Unthank studied journalism at the University of Missouri. He knew he wanted to write for a living when he won a contest for “best fantasy story” while in the 4th grade. What he didn’t know at the time, however, was that he was the only person to submit a story. Regardless, the seed was planted. Kennedy collects and plays board games in his free time, and he loves to talk about biblical apologetics. He thinks the ending of Lost “wasn’t that bad.”
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