![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Some of the interconnections between characters feel superfluous, including the way Braga's young woman, at a moment of extreme distress, winds up at the dentist's office in the first place. The hitman lies dying at a beach house in the opening scene, before flashing back to show how he entered the lives of two financially misbehaving dentists (Teresa Palmer and Sullivan Stapleton), an alcoholic rage-prone bar owner (Callan Mulvey), and the bar owner's wife (Alice Braga) who becomes everyone's primary target. In between, there is the story, which involves a seedy hitman played by cult movie hero Simon Pegg, clad in leather jacket and horseshoe mustache. The movie's chief advantage is that it was filmed along the coast of Western Australia, allowing ample opportunities to admire the scenery with its jagged cliffs and lush wilderness. When all is said and done, the technique feels a bit desperate. ![]() Sadly, Kill Me Three Times is the former more than the latter case. Jackson's concluding speech in Pulp Fiction resonates more strongly because we already know, chronologically, what happens next). The danger is that such a device will feel like an artificial means of stretching out a thin story, instead of a mechanism that complements it in a satisfying way (example: Samuel L. And while the actors all have their moments, nobody gets much of a chance to develop a flavorful character in a film that tries too hard on every level.This twisty structure is the movie's hook, though after two decades of similar narrative games in cinema, the gambit feels overly familiar. Pegg’s cold-blooded killer, smirking with amusement at all the small-town villainy, is a less likable peg (sorry) for comic-strip carnage than everyone seems to think. But Kill Me Three Times is too self-conscious to be anything much beyond smart-assy and tiresome. There’s nothing wrong with McFarland’s plotting, which is more than sound enough to work, especially with Stenders and editor Jill Bilcock hustling the action along at a driving pace, accelerated by Johnny Klimek’s music. He witnesses a series of attempted murders, scams, deceptions and acts of violent revenge, intervening with a blackmail scheme of his own when he spies a chance to double his fee. The humor derives mostly from Charlie finding himself not the expected executioner so much as the observer. The main players in a town whose other inhabitants are mostly kept offscreen are Nathan Webb ( Sullivan Stapleton), a dentist in deep with gambling debt and manipulated by his ruthless receptionist wife Lucy ( Teresa Palmer) wealthy bar owner Jack Taylor ( Callan Mulvey), whose violent jealousy has pushed away his battered bride Alice ( Alice Braga) her buff surfer-mechanic boyfriend Dylan ( Luke Hemsworth), who is planning their escape together and corrupt cop Bruce (a self-parodying Bryan Brown). McFarland and Stenders piece together the events that led to Charlie’s demise with puzzle-like dexterity, only gradually revealing who hired him. But this ain’t no sun-kissed restful paradise. Cinematographer Geoffrey Simpson turns this imposing natural setting into a dynamic canvas for sinister deeds, with a muscular shooting style and vivid embrace of color and light. That would be Eagles Nest, Western Australia, a sleepy coastal hamlet with miles of pristine beaches, presented here with wild bushland, desert sands and red rock gorges all within reach. In an opening voiceover, private detective and assassin-for-hire Charlie Wolfe ( Simon Pegg) announces his astonishment at dying in a place like this. Add in overdressed sets that call attention to themselves, heightened performance styles, skewed framing and cartoon violence, with the camera lavishing glossy money-shot adoration on every ribbon of bloodshed that explodes whenever bullet meets flesh. It continues with the non-sequential storytelling, divided into three time-shifting chapters (“Kill Me Once,” etc.) of overlapping action that allow key developments to be covered from different perspectives. That starts with the bold retro-graphic titles and swingin’ surf rock soundtrack, full of fat guitar licks. But everything here feels borrowed from readily identifiable sources. ![]()
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