Killing Time (UK 1997)

Rating: *
Review Date: 9/20/99
Cast: Kendra Torgan

Severely disappointing. An appropriate title, since that's what the film does best. Some psycho nut-job criminal named Riley kills a cop and incurs the wrath of the cop's partner, Bryant. Bryant decides to hire an Italian hitwoman (Kendra Torgan) to kill Riley, but he can't afford to pay her so he hires a bunch of incompetent boobs in a VW bus to kill her as soon as she finishes the job. The assassin takes out all of Riley's goons, but Riley is nowhere to be found. Being Italian, it's very difficult for her to get useful information out of people when she doesn't understand the local language. It just so happens that Riley will be showing up in a few hours, so she has some time to kill back at her hotel room, where she is systematically ambushed by the four idiots that Bryant hired to kill her. She discovers that Bryant double-crossed her and nearly takes him out along with Riley, except that Riley had enough cash on him to cover her fee.

The film is an exercise in stupidity and incompetence. The direction is unintelligible, and the action scenes are extremely weak and poorly thought out. The characters are just plain stupid, and the dialog is atrocious. Along with the awful dialog, the film finds it necessary to enforce the characters' stupidity by having them behave in the least rational manner possible, causing the viewer much confusion and forehead slapping. What are these people doing, and why?!? My favorite scene has to be when the assassin (Kendra Torgan) is taking a bath and a bad guy is sneaking up on her. He lightly jiggles the bathroom door knob and gets ready to burst in, guns blazing. She notices the door knob jiggling, which gives her just enough time to jump out of the tub, drain it completely, dry off, get fully dressed, grab her gun, climb into the ventilation system in the ceiling, and circle around the hotel room so that she's right above her attacker. Hmmm, something's not right here...

It's always a shame to see a film self destruct before your eyes, but what really makes me angry is that with some competent direction, this could have been a decent girls 'n' guns flick. The story itself is reasonable and even with the limited budget, more intelligent action scenes could have been developed. Ms. Torgan creates a strong persona and you can tell that she's capable of so much more than what she delivers in the film. Too bad for us she had so little to work with.