Low-budget action flick filmed in Winnipeg is no Nobody

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This article was published 01/09/2023 (1117 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The last time we saw actor/martial artist Alain Moussi in a Winnipeg-lensed action movie, he was getting his butt kicked on a bus by Bob Oedenkirk in Ilya Naishuller’s quirky 2021 action movie Nobody.

Moussi himself takes the lead of a family man forced back into the assassination game in King of Killers, an adaptation of the graphic novel of the same name by Kevin Grevioux, who directs and co-stars here.

Beyond the basic premise, there is no real comparison between the two movies.

Nobody had star power, studio money and an endlessly inventive director in Naishuller.

King of Killers was shot in little more than two weeks on a low budget during the particularly challenging Winnipeg winter of 2022, which is why it relies heavily on filming in controlled interiors. Though much of the action technically takes place in Tokyo, it was largely filmed in the Millennium Centre on Main Street.

Moussi plays Marcus Garan, assassin and single dad. In the movie’s prelude, we see how he lost his wife (Amy Groening) when she showed up at the bar where Marcus happened to be taking out a gang of Russian mobsters. She may have taken some stray bullets, but Marcus believes her death was intentional.

In any case, he is now on his own, taking care of his cute daughter (Zoe Worn), who has an enlarged heart and needs expensive surgery. That’s why Marcus answers yes when mysterious uber-assassin Drakos (Frank Grillo) extends Marcus an invitation to a tournament of assassins, with a $10-million purse.

His fellow competitors include the smouldering assassinatrix Asha (Marie Avgeropoulos), modern-day samurai Ren (Shannon Kook) and French hitman LeCroix (played by former MMA superstar Georges St-Pierre).

Director Grevioux also appears as killer Dyson Chord, gifted with the only other half-interesting motivation for entering the tournament: he is having a crisis of faith.

Otherwise, the screenplay is riddled with clichés. In Nobody, the violence was, absurdly, the manifestation of a midlife crisis. Here, it’s all about a dying daughter, the melodramatic stuff of an early Jean-Claude Van Damme smackfest.

But, as in early Jean-Claude Vas Damme smackfests, the movie has its pleasures, almost entirely in the action department. (It is no coincidence Moussi starred in the reboot of Van Damme’s Kickboxer franchise.)

The fight scenes, apparently choreographed by both Moussi and Ryan Tarran, have a certain raw energy about them, well captured by local cinematographer Paul Suderman.

Grillo is the movie’s MVP. A veteran of the Purge franchise and the Marvel universe (in which he plays Brock Rumlow/Crossbones), he has a solid tough-guy charisma.

But even as he does what he can with this movie’s mediocre script, one gets the distinct warning sign that he’s squandering it.