Kill Me Three Times – ★ ★ ★ ★ DVD Review

Simon Pegg as a hitman?  Driving a Oldsmobile Toronado?  You bet I’m in.  With time jumps and plot crossovers, Kill Me Three Times really hit the spot.  Charlie Wolfe (Pegg) finds himself in three tales of murder, blackmail and revenge as he takes on a contract killing.  After first determining that Alice (Alice Braga) is cheating on her husband Jack (Callan Mulvey), he’s asked to kill her, unfortunately several other parties have decided to kill Alice today as well.  Lucy (Teresa Palmer) and Nathan (Sullivan Stapleton) Webb; the local dentists; are in debt up to their eyeballs thanks to Nathan’s gambling and have decided to kill Alice and swap her records for Lucy’s so it appears Lucy has died and they can collect the insurance policy.  Alice’s boyfriend Dylan (Luke Hemsworth) wants to kill her abusive husband Jack, so they can run off together, but that doesn’t work if someone kills Alice first….

Kill Me Three Times had a very clever plot, with lots of intriguing motivations for everyone, and I thought it had lots of fun for a semi-serious, very stylish thriller.  Simon Pegg really brought the levity to the film, and perhaps that is why I was pulling for his character all movie long.  He’s this spectre of death, a professional hitman.  Sure he’s a bad guy, but I thought that he was also the only one in the film who was killing for the “right” reasons.  He was paid to do it.  It’s his job, plain and simple and he enjoys it, as you can tell from his “happy music” ring tone that pops up throughout the film.  Everyone else in the film was killing for greed, for revenge, or for control, but he’s doing it because he’s supposed to do it.  Though, for a professional, he’s really having a bad day, as just about every meeting he had came with a little hiccup attached to it.

Pegg was brilliant as always, and so were the rest of the cast really.  I particularly enjoyed Teresa Palmer (who was also very good in Warm Bodies), and felt a bit of sympathy for her character too, as she was initially pulled into all this mayhem by her husband’s gambling losses.  It’s pretty obvious though that she’s the brains of their operation, so she’s definitely not an innocent victim who just happens to get drawn in.  Still, I sympathized with her a bit.  Kudos as well to Australian acting legend Bryan Brown (F/X) who plays the local policeman, who controls the remote Australian town this all takes place in.  Nothing happens without his approval, legal or illegal, and Brown played the role perfectly.

Bottom Line:  As well as being a sucker for attractive blondes, I’m also a sucker for cool cars, and that Toronado was pretty darn cool car.  A cool car that became another character in the film, with the roar of it’s big engine announcing Charlie Wolfe’s arrival and signalling somebody’s death.