Killers

Killers

By: Nicolette Karter

        So, if Katherine Heigl is in a movie, it generally will be a romantic comedy, where she’s the average unlucky-in-love lead actress & her hunky costar comes along & they end up together. This was sort of branching out for her, which I was proud of.

        Katherine Heigl (playing Jen) is single while vacationing in France. There she meets her hunky costar Ashton Kutcher, who is there for business. This business is of a rather secretive spy-like nature, so he pretends to be a consultant, which is something I have no idea what it is. But, besides his necessary secret keeping (he’d tell her, but then he’d have to kill her) & her not-so-smooth nerdy-ness beginning, they fell in love, or the “love bubble” as she calls it, & promptly got married to go live happily ever after in a house the size of a mall.

        Fast forward 3 years, they are still happy & in love & nothing bad happens aside from an occasional property line spat with a neighbor. Normally, a Katherine Heigl movie ends here, but like I said she branched out this time, so this is now where things will go awry. So remember that Ashton Kutcher’s character Spencer was keeping a secret? His old boss (played by Martin Mull) does, & makes contact with the former spy saying ominous riddles to get Spencer to go back to his old job. This is when Jen’s hilariously intimidating father Mr. “Call-Me-Sir” Kornfeldt (played by the awesome & handsomely mustached Tom Selleck) walks in to take his son-in-law to a birthday dinner. Perfect timing for Spencer because he was getting his gun out of a safe at that time, & it’s obvious these two men don’t get along. After going to Spencer & Jen’s house for a surprise birthday party instead of dinner, Jen is leaving for business the morning after.

        This is when people, specifically Spencer’s best friend Henry, are alerted that if they kill Spencer, they get 20 million dollars. Nice incentive, right? While Henry & Spencer are fighting, Jen walks in to spend more time with her loving, surprising, honest & not at all highly trained in the art of fighting/killing husband. She soon finds out there are some things she doesn’t know about him as more people try shooting & both husband & wife. A car chase & murder (in self-defense, to be fair) later, Spencer informs Jen he used to work for the blah-blah-blah & was given a license to blah, & he is a former assassin, who someone wants dead. This is when she informs him she might be pregnant, & Usher weirdly pops in for a cameo as a pregnancy test salesman.

The happy couple then goes to Spencer’s office to figure out a game plan & why someone wants to kill them. While Jen is taking the pregnancy test (is now really the time for that? I know it’s important, but come on), Spencer fights even more people who were in duo’s life for years. The body count ends up to be Spencer’s best friend, one of his workers, a woman who constantly hit on him (though now literally), a post man, his old boss, Jen’s friend, and their neighbors. So, pretty much anyone they know could be trying to kill them, which is reassuring. But the 20 million dollar question is who put the target on Spencer’s back? I won’t spoil it for those who haven’t seen it, but I like the small twist in this part.

As action-packed & murderously graphic it may sound, this movie isn’t bad about actually showing the murders, & is really funny. And if a married woman finds out her husband may have a secret or two, she can be glad she doesn’t have to dodge bullets because of it (unless it’s one hell of a secret like this, in which case good luck to you & your marriage counselor).