Review: Kill Me Three Times

It appears that there’s more than one party interested in exterminating the life of Alice Braga. There’s her abusive husband Callan Mulvey, who hires a hit man (Simon Pegg) to off her for stealing from him and cheating on him with nice guy mechanic Luke Hemsworth. Meanwhile, milquetoast dentist Sullivan Stapleton and his wife Teresa Palmer (who is also the sister of Mulvey’s character) are cooking up an insurance scam that Braga will be an unwitting victim/participant in. Bryan Brown turns up as an intimidating and frankly arsehole-ish local cop.

 

“Red Dog” filmmaker Kriv Stenders tries his hand at Coen-esque crime/comedy with this 2015 flick. It bypassed cinemas here in Australia, whilst the previous “Red Dog” was championed by both audiences and critics as one of the best Aussie films in a long time. That’s funny because I don’t think either film is much chop, but this is certainly the better of the two, albeit solely for the cast, not the clichéd script by debutant James McFarland. I’m afraid the basic story isn’t interesting enough to have to sit through it being told from three different POVs.

 

Although ringer Simon Pegg is both miscast and dull, everyone else manages to do fine work. Even a handlebar moustache failed to convince me that Pegg was a threat to anyone, and since he doesn’t exactly bring marquee value to the table I’m not sure why Stenders bothered casting him in a role he’s not suited for. I’ve never liked Sullivan Stapleton before, but playing a milquetoast loser suits him surprisingly well, and Teresa Palmer is OK too.

 

The really impressive work, however is done by Alice Braga, a shark-like Bryan Brown, and the underrated Callan Mulvey. Braga manages to make chicken shit out of chicken salad, whilst an intimidating Brown and especially Mulvey steal their every scene, which isn’t nearly enough. Mulvey’s always seemingly a millimetre away from breaking out, and Brown has an amazing ability to convincingly play menacing or nice guys without changing things up too much. Yet, those little changes do make all the difference. Luke Hemsworth is perfectly fine as well, even though the script doesn’t place much importance on his character. In fact, he seems to be forgotten about entirely by the end. I liked that the film seemed to get grislier and more murderous the longer it went on, it gets quite bloody towards the end. I also liked the cool, bluesy score by Johnny Klimek (“The Killer Elite”, “Wolf Creek 2”, “I, Frankenstein”), though it does get rather repetitive.

 

Watchable, but only just. Most of the cast do a good job here, but the film is pretty clichéd and disappointing. “Blood Simple” it ain’t. 

 

Rating: C+