Killers/ The Final Destination

209. Killers
210. The Final Destination

Killers is the 2010 flick starring Ashton Kutcher and Katherine Heigl.

Heigl has just broken up with her boyfriend. To help ease the newly single blues, she goes on a vacation to Nice with her parents. While checking in at the hotel, she meets the handsome Kutcher and agrees to go out to dinner with him that evening. After this one evening, Kutcher decides that Heigl is the girl for him. Obviously,he doesn't waste any time. Fast forward to three years later to find them married and living a quiet life. That changes quickly as Kutcher's old life comes back to haunt them.

This was a decent flick. The story was alright, although the movie felt a bit disjointed at times. Especially neat the beginning. It felt as if they tried to cram 30 minutes of movie into a 20 minute slot. It just felt as though they were skipping into the future with no intentions of letting the audience in on the move. The cast was solid. I don't know what it is about Kutcher but I really like him. He's not the best actor out there but he has a charisma that makes him easy to watch. Heigl is good here in what is quickly becoming her trademark role. The supporting cast is good with Tom Selleck, Catherine O'Hara and Martin Mull. R&B singer Usher even has a small appearance here.

Overall, Killers is a decent action/comedy. I'd say it's a pretty good rainy day-type of movie.


The Final Destination is the fourth installment in the Final Destination series.

Each of the movies in this series is known for a grand scale, Rube Goldberg-style sequences where many folks are going to die. The first wasn't guilty of this but the rest of the movies have been. This is the biggest culprit. A group of friends is at a Nascar-type event when all hell breaks loose. Or does it? As it turns out, one of the friends just had a vision of the impending demise of himself and his friends. Freaking out, he gets them out of the stadium just before the events that caused their deaths in his vision start happening for real. Having narrowly avoided death, they do not realize that they have upset the grand scheme of things and that death will be coming for them regardless.

These movies ultimately follow a formula. Avoid death and then die in a manner even more gruesome. Usually there are teases about what's going to happen but oftentimes those are red herrings, designed to throw you off the scent of what's really going to happen. Of the films in this series, this one definitely feels the most formulaic. I think that the filmmakers realized the script wasn't so hot so they added the gimmick of 3-D to it. So, in watching this home video version, you get lots of shots that were obviously intended for 3-D.

Of the series, this is the weakest. The story is just a rehash of the previous films. The death sequences aren't anywhere near as clever as they have been in the past either. It feels almost as if they ran out of ideas. As for the cast, the only really recognizable names are Krista Allen and Mykelti Williamson and for those two, you have to know your movies. Everyone else feels plucked from the set of the latest Fox series.

Overall, while The Final Destination is the worst of the series, it's still a lot better than some of the movies out there. It's definitely an entertaining way to spend 90 minutes, at any rate. Recommended. Barely.