Kill, Kashton, Kill, Kill
Killers
Directed by Robert Luketic
Runtime: 100 min.
If Screwball Comedy saw courtship in terms of balanced, Shakespearean love, what can we call comedies that mix love with killing? The new Katherine Heigl-Ashton Kutcher romcom is titled Killers to confuse its kooky-cute married couple (a dimply, baby-faced spy and his civilian wife) with their gun-toting suburban neighbors. The point seems to ingest the post-9/11 guilt that Americans are treacherous. Aint it funny that was also the foundation of the loathsome Brangelina flick Mr. & Mrs Smith?
Because Katherine and Ashtonlet's call them Kashtonare a low-rent Brangelina, Killers insult is somehow less offensive. American self-loathing is a Hollywood staple and Kashton have such low-wattage sex appeal they dont ask much of us except that we smile at their attempts to be charming. Brangelina were sex-god/role models, so their adherence to Michael Moore-self-hatred upset the cultural balance. Killers is just a B-movie. Correction: D-movie, as in dumb. Heigel is sexy when she submits and Kutcher is hottest when hes boy-next-door-but-ruthless (for both of them, the less dialogue the better).
Kashton domesticate Brangelinas nihilism. Heigls sunny-blond ditziness plays off Kutchers callow machismo as if remaking a Doris Day comedynot without innocence but with less charm. The films awareness of subterfuge and assassination as contemporary habit represents a change in how people perceive loving, citizenship and morality. When theres nothing to laugh at in our political and love lives, accepting our degradation becomes a way of defending our selves. Ask George Clooney.
None of this is to inflate Killers into significance but simply to note the tangled mess of our post-9/11 lives. Im not mad at director Luketics slick careerism or Kashtons demeaning calculation. Its bemusing that they all think cold-blooded comedy is equal to the elegance and charm of Screwball. As Oliver Stone warned/prophesied in JFK: Were through the looking glass now.