‘Killer Elite’ offers old-school guy film

“Killer Elite” is a guy’s movie and makes no bones about it.

It’s an old-school straight-no-chaser action picture about an ex-CIA agent who hunts down assorted troopers from the British Special Forces to save an American agent from a vengeful Arab.

The film’s hook is that it pits Jason Statham against Clive Owen, the two marquee names among the current generation of British action stars.

Statham plays Danny, an ex-CIA assassin blackmailed out of retirement to hunt down Spike (Owen) and his British Special Forces colleagues as payback for a mission they took part in long ago.

Robert De Niro is Hunter, who used to be Danny’s boss. He’s being held hostage by an Arab sheik intent on revenge.

That sends Danny hither and yon, rounding up his own “team,” trying to take out men who are just as lethal as he is. He and his crew must make the murders look like accidents, so there will be no reprisals.

Standard killer-for-hire stuff, in other words. But what sets “Killer Elite” apart from, say, your typical stubbly-faced Statham B-movie actioner is the dialogue – reams of crisp, punchy hardboiled lines that co-writer/director Gary McKendry and screenwriter Matt Sherring cooked up or copped from the Ranulph Fiennes novel “The Feather Men.”

“I’m done with killing,” Danny mutters.

“Maybe killing isn’t done with you,” Hunter mutters back.

“Killing’s easy. Living with it’s the hard part.”

McKendry, new to feature films, wanders a bit, giving us government intrigues, a love interest for Danny (Yvonne Strahovski) and other distractions. But he handles the assorted “hits” with gritty, period flare.

It’s hard to see the victims as particularly deserving of their fate. And that lack of a sense of “righteous kills” creates an unease that strips “Killer Elite” of some of its cool.

But it’s still a decent yarn, decently told, a tough-guy film built around veteran screen tough guys.

Best of all, the filmmakers took the time to give these hard men just the right things to say — not catchphrases, just lines that smell of blood and gunpowder every time Statham, Owen or De Niro utter them.