The Killer Elite

A Sam Peckinpah film that I was drawn to because it stars James Caan and Robert Duvall. I liked the idea of Sonny and Tom Hagen playing mercenaries working for a shell corporation run by the CIA. The first twenty minutes of the film are just that and it was mildly entertaining. Then Duvall betrays Caan. Duvall virtually dissappears from the film. Caan spends close to an hour rehabbing from his bullet wounds. Then he is thrust back to work to protect an agency contact that Duvall is trying to kill. The layer upon layer of conspiracy within the corporation was unintelligible to me and the actual mission Caan is sent on baffled me at every turn. Most upsetting is the fact that the action was so stilted and uninspired and confusingly shot. I haven't seen a lot of Peckinpah's films, but I expected a higher level of slickness.