The Killer Elite

Handsome widescreen digital transfer for one of Sam Peckinpah's most underestimated films, 1975's angrily prescient satire on corporate America, whose ultra-cool surface belies the roiling fury at its bleak and bitter heart. James Caan and Robert Duvall are cynical operatives for a San Francisco-based intelligence agency, doing jobs too dirty even for the CIA. Early on, Caan is crippled by gunfire in a bloody double-cross and 'retired' from the company.

Trending Now

Handsome widescreen digital transfer for one of Sam Peckinpah’s most underestimated films, 1975’s angrily prescient satire on corporate America, whose ultra-cool surface belies the roiling fury at its bleak and bitter heart. James Caan and Robert Duvall are cynical operatives for a San Francisco-based intelligence agency, doing jobs too dirty even for the CIA. Early on, Caan is crippled by gunfire in a bloody double-cross and ‘retired’ from the company. At which point, The Killer Elite becomes a meditation on familiar Peckinpah themes of loyalty, betrayal and revenge.

Following Caan’s long rehabilitation, the film’s second half features a series of brilliantly filmed and edited set-pieces, including a Chinatown shoot-out, a dockyard face-off and a grand climax aboard a mothballed battleship in the US Navy’s graveyard fleet in North Bay, where Caan and grizzled sidekicks Burt Young and Bo Hopkins take on a small army of ninja assassins.

Advertisement
Advertisement

Latest Issue

Advertisement

Features

Advertisement
Handsome widescreen digital transfer for one of Sam Peckinpah's most underestimated films, 1975's angrily prescient satire on corporate America, whose ultra-cool surface belies the roiling fury at its bleak and bitter heart. James Caan and Robert Duvall are cynical operatives for a San Francisco-based...The Killer Elite