The Movie: Killers

Reel Thing Rating: 2 out of 5 Reels
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If this movie had a subtitle, it would be: “The Spy Who Loved Me…Only I Didn’t Know He Was a Spy. Until People Were Trying to Kill Us.”

After being dumped by her geek boyfriend, Jen jets off to the south of France to recover from heartbreak, which would be quite glamorous except for the part where she’s with her parents, who treat her like she’s a six-year-old.

Her luck seems to turn up on the very first day when she meets Spencer, a scantily clad hottie and international man of mystery. Despite a first date in which Jen drinks too much, barely dodges her parents, gets mistaken for a hooker, has to be cut out of her dress before it cuts off her circulation, right before she passes out cold—and Spencer, on the job as a secret government assassin, surreptitiously blows up a helicopter with a bad guy on board—the two nonetheless hit it off and fall in love and go on to enjoy many romantic moments all over the French seaside.

Fast forward, literally, and Jen and Spencer have been married for three years. Spencer’s retired from the spy game, running his own construction company, and they live in a nice house in a cookie cutter subdivision where all the neighbors say good morning to each other and eagerly anticipate the annual block party. Pretty idyllic—unless, like K. and I, you happen to be an urbanite, in which case it looks like a bleak wasteland where no one can find a decent bagel.

Their suburban storybook life gets turned upside down when Spencer’s former boss tries to rope him in for one last assignment. Jen learns the hard way the truth about Spencer’s past when all those good friends and neighbors turn out to be sleeper agents who are now trying to kill them. In the predictable ensuing chase, Jen discovers she’s pregnant and that her dad is also a secret agent. In fact, he’s the one who unleashed the assassins, because he thought Spencer was coming after him…or something. It was never all that clear.

So, obviously it’s a real mess, but is there some hope that these two are still The Reel Thing?

Well, they did seem to have a spark when they met, and their marriage looked happy enough before all hell broke loose, but…what do they say about a relationship built on a foundation of lies? Oh, yeah, it crumbles. As Jen says, everything’s different when you have a kid, and we can’t imagine that she’ll ever really be able to trust Spencer again. If her parents’ marriage, in which Jen’s mom drinks her weight in alcohol at every meal, is any example of what it’s like being married to a spy, present or former, we say to Jen: Run, run away!

For all that the movie is ridiculous nonsense pretty much from start to finish, it does raise some interesting questions. Can you ever really forgive someone who has done nothing but lie to you? Is there such a thing as starting over? Can you ever truly put your past behind you? We don’t know the answers! We’re movie reviewers, not therapists. What we can say, though, is that this is the kind of story that kills our love for the romantic comedy. If anyone tries to tell you that K. and I + this movie = The Reel Thing, it’s all lies!

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