While it sounds like an excellent set-up for a tension-filled game of cat and mouse between two well-matched warriors, it devolves into something else entirely.
In Killing Season, John Travolta plays Emil Kovac, a member of the Scorpions, a Serbian paramilitary group that committed war crimes during the Bosnian War in the early 1990s. As the film opens, we see American soldiers liberating some of the Bosnian people from one of the Scorpions’ detention camps. The Americans also discover a boxcar full of people who have clearly been starved to death. After their capture by the Americans, Kovac is lined up with several other Scorpions to be executed. We hear a gun shot.
The film flashes forward to present-day Serbia. We see Kovac meeting a man in a bar. Kovac exchanges some money for files containing military leaders’ personal information. One soldier included in the file is American Colonel Benjamin Ford. Kovac looks at the file and says that he’s “going hunting.”
Then the film cuts to the now-retired Colonel Ford (Robert De Niro) living in an isolated cabin in the Tennessee wilderness. Estranged from his family, Ford lives alone. When Ford’s truck breaks down on the way to town for medicine he needs, Kovac arrives seemingly out-of-nowhere to help. Posing as a tourist from Europe, Kovac fixes Ford’s truck and they travel back to the cabin. Over dinner and drinks, the two men share their similarities and flaws. Both served in the military. Both have expert survival skills. Despite a few differing opinions regarding the past, they seem to strike up a fast friendship.
Kovac invites Ford to hunt for elk with him in the morning. Ford accepts and they walk out into the woods together at dawn. However, Kovac doesn’t really want to hunt elk. He’s actually looking for the opportunity to hunt Ford one-on-one, although we have to wait to find out why.
While it sounds like an excellent set-up for a tension-filled game of cat and mouse between two well-matched warriors, it devolves into something else entirely. Soon after putting the two men on the literal warpath, the script becomes a back-and-forth exchange of capture-and-release with a little torture thrown in for good measure. The interesting premise collapses as the pair deal out unbelievable amounts of body damage to each other in between episodes of blindly running through the forest.
It doesn’t help that the script tries to pound home a less-than-subtle message about what the horrors of war can do to a person. Making matters even worse is the non-intentionally hilarious accent that Travolta uses to deliver his lines. About 10 minutes into the movie, I was forced to turn on the subtitles because I couldn’t understand much of what he was saying.
At the rate Robert De Niro appears in movies lately, it’s hard to believe this movie is his only on-screen pairing with Travolta. These two talented actors are all the film has to offer. Both deserve better.
2.0 out of 5.0 stars
