Kill List

There is a moment in Kill List that, if you can stomach it, warrants a second look. Two retired British soldiers have taken contract work to make ends meet, and it’s an ugly business. During a series of cleanup jobs, they confront a child pornographer whose head they thunderously bash in with a hammer. It’s a great trick of visual effects or props, because it looks horrifyingly real. But how’d they do it? The story is an effective whodunit (or who-runs-it, in this case), but it’s hard to focus on plot advancement with all of the unforgiving violence. It’s appropriate for the characters, so that’s not a complaint, but it is very graphic. One of the few movies that quite literally keep you in the dark until the final frames, Kill List is a doozy, but more for what it portrays than what it truly is.