Written by: James McFarland
Starring: Sullivan Stapleton, Alice Braga, Teresa Palmer, Simon Pegg, Luke Hemsworth
Rating: [3/5]
Money continually manages to push people towards unseemly actions, as everyone knows, but mixing that in with moments of passion and contract killers summarizes what we receive in Kill Me Three Times. A wholly absurd film and yet one that just scratches the right itch if you happen to be in the mood to watch a forgettable but fun little romp with some fun actors in the fray. Certainly not best in class but it certainly kept me entertained.
After finding out his wife has been cheating on him, Jack (Callan Mulvey) hires contract killer Charlie (Simon Pegg) to track her down and get her out of the picture for a hefty sum. As Charlie attempts to complete this gig, he sees a married couple Nathan (Sullivan Stapleton) and Lucy (Teresa Palmer) weirdly trying to do the same.
A flurry of coincidental interactions pretty much sums up the game in Kill Me Three Times where plenty of bad intentions meet in the effort of killing one singular woman. The reason Charlie and the married couple of Lucy and Nathan find themselves in this coincidental circumstance has slight differences but the same goal. Therefore, we have many people focused on death, motivated by money all colliding allowing for some entertaining and comedic hijinks.
As the plot progresses it certainly has its major faults in how ridiculous it gets that even the over the top comedic tone cannot fully atone for but following Simon Pegg as Charlie in the feature definitely brought the laughs as one can expect. Pegg goes about this feature with this confidence in his abilities but also seeing how this all plays out in a comedic manner. There are moments where he cannot believe his luck at how things are going his way without him exerting any real effort, and then those where we cannot believe all the nonsense going on around him. This little game both gives and takes for this character and Pegg proved as the perfect antidote for all the narrative issues, seeing as long as we had him on screen everything was okay in the world.
Unfortunately, he was not in every single frame and those moments, particularly with Nathan and Lucy, just did not deliver in ways that measured up to what we experienced with Charlie. Teresa Palmer and Sullivan Stapleton just did not have the gusto and hilarity of Pegg, which made their particular scenes not all that interesting even through they pretty much carried all the drama because their play involved a life insurance scam needing to be done properly in order to receive the cash-out they need. Poor Alice just finds herself in the middle of this circumstance, even though she’s not entirely innocent in this entire game.
Ultimately, this film hinges on this reality of no one here really being a good person as they all are willing to do extreme things to enrich their lives monetarily. As the title references, there will be death and they certainly happen here in an almost comedic manner. Everyone becomes fair game and the manner in which it happens displays its highly derivative nature of the film as it seeks to emulate the works of far better filmmakers in this type of film and feels like a pale comparison when put up against to them. However, it still maintains its own fun, which allows me to look past all of it for the most part.
By no means a film that redefines its genre or breaks new ground but Kill Me Three Times at the very least knows how to entertain in the most ridiculous ways. The success of this film pretty much lives and dies with Simon Pegg and luckily he sits at the forefront of much of the film where he plays against type as a straight-up villain. Even as a villain, he has all the trademarks we can appreciate from a Simon Pegg performance and he ties everything together here. Everyone else here surely tried their best but they just could not raise the level of the screenplay they received much like Pegg did. Plenty of enjoyment to be had if in the right mood for what this film tries to achieve.
Films with Josh 
