Reading through J's review of Death Game (review here) a little while ago, I was struck by a few key words and phrases that echoed my sentiments about The Killing Device, my personal cinematic punishment courtesy of Cinema Pops: 'insipid' was one good one and 'this film fails in almost every category of filmmaking' another, just to name a few. At the risk of stealing J's entire review (aside from the synopsis), I'll stop there and start complaining all on my own...

As for plot: the film begins with a muscle-bound, sub-B-level action star slowly making his way through a building to a top-secret meeting of bad actors playing government officials. After working his way past various guards and a laser security field, he finally makes his way to the meeting and promptly proceeds to take out the entire assortment of officials. Sounds like your typical direct-to-video action movie opener, no? Now he simply has to get a girl, run around while some stuff blows up, and go live happily ever after. But, of course, things don't turn out nearly so well for us, for this isn't actually the movie's star (despite his prominent placing on the DVD cover), but a villain, and, after finishing his assassination, he turns his gun on himself (a luxury the audience will soon envy), thereby killing every character that we have met in the past 15 minutes.

As one can imagine, at this point, things begin to flounder, since we're basically starting from scratch with new characters and the same plot that was not furthered at all by the preceding 15-minute sequence, which was supposed to be suspenseful at least, but was not because we had already received the information that the Killing Device, a rather non-threatening object that looks like a tooth on a twig, serves to turn human beings into assassins, which immediately lead us to half-expect the 'unexpected.'

After the opening, the film flounders for another 15 minutes, during which we get exposition on the villains, two government scientists working on the Killing Device who are upset over their project being terminated. Just as we're starting to think that perhaps they will be our heroes, 30 minutes into the film a protagonist finally surfaces (seemingly at random) in the form of a scrawny newspaper reporter who receives a seemingly random phone call from an informant with information about the Killing Device. This leads him to a dentist's office, which, apparently, the two rogue scientists have somehow infiltrated and are using to attach Killing Devices to various unsuspecting victims. After snagging himself a Killing Device of his own (as evidence, pre-prepared with its own little baggie) and escaping from the two scientists, our intrepid reporter finds himself on the run with the office's impossibly pretty dental hygienist (anyone who's ever been to a dentist will know hygienists never look like this...). And so, for the rest of the movie, the couple runs for its life as a incomprehensibly vague government conspiracy somehow involving the Soviets and Afghanistan (how topical...) is revealed, and eventually the whole mess draws to a close after 87 mind-throttling minutes (sans credits).

Now, where to begin the analysis? This is a movie, after all, that is so bereft of anything entertaining that analyzing its failure could comprise a mammoth film class thesis.

I suppose the biggest blunder is in the characterization, or the lack of it. One of the biggest problems with Killing Device is that it generates absolutely no interest on the part of the audience. The fact that the protagonists aren't even introduced until a half hour into the movie definitely adds to the problem, though only in some respects, since once they're there, they're basically insufferable anyway. Still, this choice has left director Paul MacFarlane with quite a challenge: he must now characterize his protagonists quickly so as not to slow down the action. Indeed, this is a tough task, though it can be done, as movies like Fargo readily evidence. However, The Killing Device is most definitely not Fargo, and MacFarlane is most definitely not a Coen brother (even at their lows), so, in a rather radical move, he simply opts to skip characterization all together, leaving us with a pair of protagonists that we know absolutely nothing about and who seem to exist solely in order to be characters in a movie. Both of them can disappear for days at a time without anyone caring (yet sadly we the audience can't escape them for a minute), and neither seems to have any outside life that will at all interfere with his/her participation in this grand chase. In this respect, Killing Device may in fact be a first, for, while many action movies feature 'cardboard cut-out' characters, this one is the only one I've ever seen that features heroes who seem more like place holders for actual characters who will be inserted later. Based on characterization, the audience has a better chance of sympathizing with the villains, since at least we know who the fuck they are and why they're doing what they're doing.

Of course, any interest one might have held in the villains is quickly hobbled (no, not just hobbled, given the full-on Kathy Bates Misery treatment) by the fact that the two criminal masterminds and expert scientists are some of the most inept antagonists ever to befoul a television screen. Whether stopping a chase on foot to get in a car but leaving one man out of the car so the other must drive at running speed anyway or being sure to yell out, "There they are! They'll never get away now!" twenty yards away from their quarry, which then invariably escapes, these two prove themselves to be absolutely maddening in their ineptitude and manage to suck any malicious fun right out of the film's proceedings.

Oh wait, but there's more - much more! There's the acting, which, sadly, can't even succeed at being bad enough to be good; it's just passably mediocre and thus thoroughly unsatisfying. Similarly, direction is wildly uneven, ranging for having the air of competence (there are some well-filmed explosions, for example) to screaming ineptitude, as in several dialogue scenes between characters in cars during which a character will get into a car and the camera will rest on the unmoving exterior of the car while the conversation is dubbed in.

Along with all this, other important things like motivation and logic are similarly missing, and plot holes riddle the entire production. Probably the most confounding sequence is the first one, which contains innumerable head-scratching moments. First off, our assassin is accompanied briefly on his journey by a small locomotive robot that kills one guard and disappears, never to be explained or seen again. It's once the man gets inside the astoundingly threadbare government meeting room, however, that things really take a turn for the Kafkaesque. Once the assassin has taken out his first few targets, he decides to engage in hand-to-hand combat with another, despite the fact that he is still carrying a gun full of bullets. Seeing as the Killing Device basically renders him a robotic killer, I cannot fathom why he wouldn't simply kill this man, too, in the easiest manner available, though, indeed, his constant complication of a supposedly robotically-simple duty will become a theme for the entire scene. Anyway, as these two struggle, we cut away briefly, and, upon returning, find that our killer's shirt has now magically disappeared, seemingly for no other reason than to expose his much-flabbier-than-his-arms chest for the rest of the sequence. Finally, as though his first complication of his mission weren't enough, our killer than takes out a couple of weapons and gives one to his opponent, which makes about as much sense, from a robotic device's 'perspective,' as your computer's virus scanner releasing bugs into your system in order to catch them again. I guess it goes without saying that, by the time everyone was dead and the assassin had started randomly firing at the walls and bookshelves, I needed to pause and take a little breather before progressing onward, and while, thankfully, things never reached such a befuddling level of nonsensicality again, they nevertheless still remain decidedly goofy (considering the nature of the Killing Device, I guess it's no surprise that we would get plot turns as tragically ludicrous as this) yet still, amazingly, spectacularly uninteresting at the same time.

So what else is there? Well, aside from the lacks of structure, characterization, acting, continuity, and logic, the music is also particularly grating, mostly consisting of bland guitar riffs, although during the climactic 'helicopter vs. powerboat' battle it does break into a cringe-inducing theme song that (I swear to God) contains the lyrics: 'She thinks killing is nice / With her brand new Killing Device.' I find it absolutely unfathomable that any director would allow such a song into his (seemingly) serious movie; however, here we are...

As for presentation, video is appropriately trashy-looking, appearing faded with age and whatnot, though it's really no loss. Sound is similarly bland, and the movie is presented full frame, which appears to be its proper ratio, not that it really matters.

As for extras, there are motion menus that seem a little too hopeful in their depiction of the movie playing at a theater (even a virtual one), and there is a three-minute trailer compilation for movies that all looked like more fun than this one (yes, even Death Game).

Looking now, wistfully, at my Killing Device box, I find myself, as a final kick while I'm down, feeling quite deceived. On the back is a disclaimer reading, 'Not recommended for persons under 17 years of age: contains extreme violence, nudity and strong language,' when in fact the film contains very little violence - and only of the cheap 'red corn syrup dribble' variety, nudity that consists of a rather unappealing strip tease and a sex scene rendered unwatchable by its awful music and disinterested participants, and rather little of this promised 'strong language.' On the front, the muscle-bound assassin poses with a gun, still looking like he could be the star of the movie; above him, it reads: 'Heaven help us... the hunt is on!' Heaven help us indeed...