Killer Elite is a not-quite remake of a 70's film of (almost) the same name with James Caan and Robert Duvall. From the descriptions, about the only thing they have in common is that they both have assassins.
I've noticed that when a film has a trailer that actively works to deceive you (see: The Negotiator), the movie is going to be awful. Here Clive Owen has only one scene with Robert Deniro and the plot driver is a group of Arabs who don't appear in the trailer at all. Not only that, they go out of their way to make it appear that Owen is the one holding Deniro prisoner.
In the recent film, Robert Deniro had a high billing, but he had few enough scenes that it seems reasonable to say that he was just collecting a paycheck for putting his name on the film. This was not a great movie, but the flaws were not such that usually disqualify a film from being popular.
The problem of uncertainty runs throughout. Portions of the film just feel tacked on. The epilogue text talks about how the movie is based on a book about "The Feather Men". This is apparently a secret cabal of former SAS officers who... meet together... for some reason?
The justification for why this committee is in the film never really is made apparent. One of them gives the most awkward bit of exposition I've seen in a long time to explain to the audience who they are. For no reason at all he reiterates it all to another character who knows it all already. There's not even a pretense of making it part of the conversation that was occurring. The only real point they seem to have is to finance Clive Owen in his efforts to fight Statham.
In the end, like just about all the movies starring Jason Statham, it's a tale, told
by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing. The movie is
confused about whether it is simply telling an exciting story or if it
is a morality tale about the futility of revenge.
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