Critic Reviews

Killing Season is like the Saturday morning cartoon version of a terrible movie: still bad, but at least colorful enough to go down easy.

With casting this unconvincing, no one is watching to get a lesson in the horrors of war.

Director Mark Steven Johnson can’t seem to balance a tone here, which is a pity because for the most part he stands back and lets the two stars go at each other.

It’s not worthless, but it’s not good. As a genre film, it’s too ambitious; as an art film, it’s too obvious.

Mark Steven Johnson's Killing Season is a hard movie to take seriously, which is particularly unfortunate since it deals with such weighty issues as genocide, the ethical compromises that everyone makes in combat, and the lingering effects of wartime decisions on participants years down the line.

Travolta, who was more believable as a middle-aged housewife in “Hairspray” than he is as a former Serbian commando, has the accent down pat. But his Boris-and-Natasha-style syntax seems to represent Killing Season best. Just imagine that voice saying: Dees ees very seelly movie. Catch on cable TV, please.

The pretentious, preposterous, dueling-dialect flameout called Killing Season has to stand as one of the biggest missed opportunities in iconic matchups.

De Niro mostly looks miserable and very tired (a document glimpsed on-screen hilariously claims his character was born in 1970) and prattles on endlessly about forgetting the past.

Cheaply made, dramatically inept and staggeringly dull despite a running time that only clocks in at maybe 80 minutes tops before the end credits begin, it is so devoid of passion, energy and intelligence that it makes one wonder why those responsible even bothered to make it in the first place.