Elmore Leonard To Suck No More???

Hey guys, it's Donnie...Elmore Leonard is a fantastic writer. Seriously, the man is pretty much the epitome of cool when it comes to novels, and for a while there he was on a freakin role when it came to adaptations of those novels. Get Shorty, Jackie Brown, Out Of Sight, and even the TV version of Maximum Bob, one of my favorite of his books, was pretty damn good. Then it all started to go downhill. The Big Bounce, by all rights, should have been fantastic, but underwhelming is probably a more accurate description. Be Cool...the book is pretty good, but the movie had an affinity for sucking balls. So, just when I'm ready to write off Elmore Leonard as someone whose time has come and gone in the film industry, we get word of Killshot.

In the novel, a woman and her iron worker husband witness an extortion plot and then go on the run from two killers, Blackbird, precise and professional, and Richie, sloppy and a little unhinged. Sounds like your typical Leonard plot right? So why should we be interested...?

Well, first we've got the cast: Diane Lane and Thomas Jane will play the married couple. These are two solid actors, each of whom have been shortchanged by some crappy movies in the past (Must Love Dogs/Punisher) None the less, when they've got good stuff to work with, both are absolutely at the top of their game. We've only got one of the killers cast as of yet, the neat and tidy one, and it's none other than Mickey Fucking Rourke. The Mick has pretty much been batting 1000 this millenium and this looks like a great role into which he can really sink the teeth in his tremendous jawbone. Oh yeah, and did I mention that Tarrantino is executive producing? If that doesn't offer a degree of credibility I'm not sure what will.

The movie is necessarily a sure thing. It's directed by John Madden, whose previous work pretty much consists of Shakespeare In Love. He's got Proof coming out later this year and it looks like he knocked that one out of the park, but obviously he's going to have a set a very different tone for Killshot. Based on the title alone, I should hope that there's a dramatically different tone between a movie called Shakespeare In Love and a movie called Killshot. This is definitely one I'm gonna monitor closely. Right now it's toeing the line of suck but definitely seems to be leaning in the kick ass direction...