There’s been this prevailing narrative over the last few years that Dave Bautista is the best wrestler turned accurate in the history of Hollywood.

Better than Rowdy Roddy  Piper,  better than Hulk Hogan,  better than Stone Cold Steve Austin,  better than John Cena,  and better than Dwayne The Rock Johnson. One would ask those making that claim how many movies they have seen featuring a pro wrestler before Guardians of the Galaxy. 

Thanks to this Kool-Aid drinking narrative,  there is a large push within Hollywood to make Dave Batista a legitimate actor under the guys who have the capability of displaying what the industry calls range.  It’s no secret that Dave Batista has had a lot of help from the industry from guys such as James Gunn to propel him to his career at this point.

But the important question has not yet been asked or answered,  is Dave Batista a box office draw?  He has been involved in some big-time movies such as Guardians of the Galaxy, the Avengers, and Dune.  But can the former WWE Champion draw an audience to watch a film centered around him?

Batista has yet to prove that he has a bit of a boxing off his name than the Rock,  and after watching his latest film The Killers Game it’s hard to claim that Batista is a better action star than the Rock as well. ‘The Killer’s Game’ is a story about a skilled Hitman named Joe Flood played by Batista.

Flood is one of the most skilled in his profession being able to mix brutality with stealth for a guy his size.  After a completed job,  he meets a woman named Maize who he falls in love with. After weeks of suffering from sudden headaches and loss of vision, he goes to a doctor and finds out that he has a progressive brain disease which has left him with a few months to live.

Not wanting to expose his love for his true profession,  Joe gets the idea to arrange his assassination to go out with honor and dignity. Unfortunately for Joe the second the clock strikes midnight he is told by his doctor that he’s not dying but at this point, it is far too late to cancel the contract.  Joe must now figure out a way to prevent the world’s best assassins from killing him and ending his one true chance at finding love in the face of his dangerous profession.

For a film like The Killing Game,  a premise like this goes as far as the characters in the film will take it.  At this point, we have seen the Assassin Hitman genre done to death with the Popularity of the John Wick movies over the last decade.  In 2024 it is very difficult to do an assassin bass action movie and not feel like a water gown distilled from what we’ve already seen many times before.

‘The Killer’s Game’ takes quite a while for the story to get going even though audiences already know the premise going in.  The pacing issues in this movie are glaring even for a film that has an hour and 40 minutes of runtime total.  This is a film that could have cut out 20 to 25 minutes worth of filler that would have kept the Tempo pace of the film which is lacking in this movie.

It’s safe to say that Hollywood doesn’t trust Dave Batista to run his movie because the 2024 film ‘My Spy: The Eternal City’ Was relegated to Amazon Prime from its theatrical release a few years back.  In this movie, Batista has several familiar faces to help him across the finish line such as Sofia Boutella, Terry Crews, Pom Klementieff, and Ben Kingsley. 

On paper, the premise of this movie is too contrived And has way too many moving pieces to be coherent. The formula that the film seeks is introducing an assassin who has some type of over-the-top personality trait and then watching them die just a scene later. The downfall for the movie is the inexperience across the board both behind and in front of the camera. 

JJ Perry is the director here whose Directing credit was from the Netflix film day shift,  and the two writers associated with this don’t have much more experience than him. Combine that with the fact that Dave Batista despite multiple chances is not experienced enough to lead his film. The assistance that Dave gets in this movie is from Ben Kingsley whose presence in the movie is minimal,  Pom Klementieff who enjoys not having to wear Antennas on her head, Sofia Boutella Who is coming off of the massive flop of Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon series on Netflix,  and Terry Crews who’s the one who brings any true personality to this film but not enough to salvage it.

Despite being an action comedy,  the action is watered down thanks to and done to death and genuine laughs are few and far between. All in all the biggest flaw with the killer game is that it is a movie that is in desperate need of an editor. 

‘The Killer’s Game’ is a movie that doesn’t have enough style or substance to hold his own weight 

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