Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		2.0

First Kill Blu-ray Movie Review

The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun pretending to be a good guy with a gun is — oh, never mind.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 1, 2017

Note: It’s impossible to discuss some elements of First Kill without mentioning plot points that some may deem spoilers, though I have to say anyone not seeing the biggest supposed “twist” coming from about the first moment one character is introduced had better turn in their Screenplay 101 membership cards. For those wanting to avoid any mention of potential spoiler material, skip down to the technical portions of the review, below.

A pretty famous Second Amendment supporter achieved pundit status (for better or worse) with his pronouncement that “the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” but First Kill throws a potential monkey wrench into that premise by offering a bad guy with a gun who is supposed to be a good guy and a good guy with a gun who is perhaps drifting over into bad guy territory (under duress, of course), perhaps making such a generalized comment like that unfortunately useless or at best unhelpfully confusing. The film seems to be about one thing for much of its running time, with a sudden if expected detour coming late in the proceedings that ostensibly puts everything in a new context. Will (Hayden Christensen) is a hard working finance guru whose quest for the almighty dollar has left him a little uninvolved with his home life with his wife Laura (Megan Leonard) and especially his young son Danny (Ty Shelton). When it turns out Danny has been getting bullied at school, Will has a crisis of conscience and decides to arrange for some male bonding time with his boy by taking the family back to the rural environment where Will grew up, with a deer hunting escapade part of the festivities. In what almost plays like a potential commercial for the organization which employs that aforementioned would be pundit, there’s a lustrously shot scene of Will teaching Danny the ins and outs of proper gun safety protocol, letting him experiment with a rifle with a high powered scope. When the family gets to the town where Will grew up, though, they have a peculiar interchange with Chief of Police Marvin Howell (Bruce Willis), one that seems fraught with subtext that the film’s screenplay never adequately details. The film has already shown a bank robbery in its pre-credits sequence, and Howell mentions that some subterfuge at the local savings and loan has put everyone in the town (including Howell) on edge, and that Will should keep his eyes open. When Will and Danny head out into the woods on their hunting adventure and more or less literally stumble into a scene involving what seems to be two of the bank robbers, things look like they might be getting into The Most Dangerous Game territory, with Will and Danny the assumed targets, but instead the film veers off into a quasi-hostage situation that admittedly goes to a few unexpected places, even if the overall arc of the film is resolutely predictable.

One of the better handled subplots, and a distinctive element that perhaps elevates this outing above other collaborations between Bruce Willis and director Steven C. Miller (Marauders, Extraction), is in the development of the character of Levi (Gethin Anthony), one of the two guys Will and Danny stumble upon, and, later, the more or less kidnapper of Danny. The more or less part plays out in a couple of ways: first, Levi and Danny begin bonding, and there are some kind of oddly affecting if subtextually squirm worthy sequences of the two playing video games and shooting the breeze together; and second, there’s a bit of casual illogic at play since Will, while ostensibly sucked into a plot of Levi’s (which won’t be spoiled here), really has several opportunities to simply stop the kidnapping cold, but doesn’t or else there wouldn’t be much of a movie.

Where First Kill misses the boat most spectacularly is with regard to the performances of Christensen and Willis. I just remarked the other day how refreshing it was to see Willis in RED 4K obviously having fun and not displaying some of his more tiresome mannerisms. Unfortunately, Willis fills this performance with lots of business (needless hand movements, quirky facial tics, etc.) and telegraphs the duplicitous nature of Howell from his very first scene, making a supposed big surprise late in the film beyond predictable. But Christensen also seems too effete to try to bond with his son on a hunting trip (of all things), and that tends to rob the film’s climax (which also has a completely needless and overwrought second hostage involved) of some of its supposed drama. At least somewhat offsetting Christensen and Willis are Shelton and (especially) Anthony, both of whom offer the film’s best moments. There are a couple of well staged action scenes in the film, including a fun ATV chase through the forest that may remind some of similar events in a certain science fiction franchise that helped establish Christensen’s star power.

First Kill Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

First Kill is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.40:1. The film's closing credits helpfully list the Arri Alexa Mini as the camera of choice, and this digitally captured offering offers generally very sharp imagery with excellent detail levels, at least when lighting regimens allow. The film has been kind of unusually color graded at times, with even supposedly "normal" lighting conditions looking kind of yellow or yellow-green at times, and some of the forest imagery is defintely skewed toward an almost garish yellow-green hue. A couple of rainy storm scenes have a deep blue grading (the making of featurette seems to suggest it was a bright and sunny day when this sequence was shot). These approaches, coupled with a lot of dark scenes, tend to keep some fine detail levels at bay, but in decent lighting, things perk up considerably, to the point that some of the gruesome wounds that are shown may provoke a bit of stomach churning. Director Miller and cinematographer Cox favor a lot of extreme close-ups, something that promotes really good fine detail levels a lot of the time, but the abundance of pretty dark scenes tends to undercut those levels at other times.

First Kill Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Despite having a number of potential elements like forest ambient environmental sounds, manic chases with a number of different vehicles through that forest, and little things like, you know, gunfire, First Kill's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track is just a little less boisterous than I was personally expecting. The side and rear channels are certainly engaged, most noticeably in the big set pieces, but it's kind of intermittent usage, with a lot of the surround activity being generated by the score more than anything. Dialogue is always rendered cleanly and the entire track is smartly prioritized and free of any problems.

First Kill Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Director's Commentary


• Behind the Scenes of First Kill (1080p; 11:19) is pretty standard EPK fare, but does have some fun footage showing some of the action scenes being shot.


• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 5:26)


• Cast / Crew Interviews (1080p; 1:02:13) include Gethin Anthony, Megan Leonard, Ty Shelton, Will De Meo, Steven C. Miller (Director), Brandon Cox (Cinematographer), and Theo Kypri (Stunt Coordinator).


• First Kill Trailer (1080p; 2:15)

First Kill Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

This may be damning with faint praise, but for my money this is definitely the best of the apparently endless collaborations between Bruce Willis and Steven C. Miller. With a little smarter writing and less telegraphing on the part of Willis this actually could have been a really impressive little thriller, since the portrayal of Levi is so unusual, as is his quasi father-son bonding with Danny. Christensen and Willis just didn't do it for me in the film, though, but fans of the actors may want to check this out nonetheless, and for them technical merits are generally very good.