Film Review: AN HOUR TO KILL (2018)

AN HOUR TO KILL * USA 2018 Dir: Aaron K Carter. 96 mins

A pair of low rent hitman – including excruciatingly “spiritual” pink-shirted Frankie Pozos – have the eponymous hour to kill while heading to North Hollywood for their next job, at the behest of their bewigged boss Mr Kinski (veteran character actor Mel Novak). They pass the time by sharing random stories that play out on screen. “Valkyrie’s Bunker” is a lame 1981-set slasher piece with off-camera kills and what appears to be at least one missing script page at the end.
Five women in search of a marijuana patch stumble across a hidden Nazi bunker in the Santa Monica mountains and, after some aimless banter (“Hitler’s birthday is 4/20 – cool day to be born on!”) are killed by a gas-masked weirdo. “Assacre” is a painful descent into flatulence humour as the host of vodcast “Food Coma” joins a burrito-eating contest in a Mexican restaurant and endures the after-effects of his prize – a notoriously hot pepper. “Hoghunters” follows the initiation of a naïve young guy at a small-town bowling club – a process that involves a contest to fuck fat women (“First one to make her squeal wins!”), and a rape courtesy of a pig-faced lady. Much of this independent anthology movie is merely amateurish and joyless, characterised by broad / awkward performances and drab Tarantino-inspired hitman chatter. Far worse, however, is the prominent streak of juvenile gross-out “humour”, which highlights an undercurrent of homophobia and (especially) misogyny, turning the whole thing into an obnoxious ordeal.

Review by Steven West