Kill Me Three Times Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.5

Kill Me Three Times Blu-ray Movie Review

Maybe Four or Five . . .

Reviewed by Michael Reuben July 23, 2015

Director Kriv Stenders likes to describe Kill Me Three Times (or "KM3T") as a throwback to Hollywood films of the Eighties and Nineties, but its true roots go back several decades earlier to classic film noir, where the men were dumb and corruptible, and the women were quick to exploit them. The difference is that KM3T is set under the sunny skies of Western Australia, where the surf and sand would make a gorgeous travel brochure, if only there weren't so many corpses and exploded automobiles dotting the landscape. The Nineties reference does apply, though, because James McFarland's script for KM3T overlaps stories, shifts perspective and jumps back and forth in time, all of which calls up associations with Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction—a reference oddly missing from the extras assembled for Magnolia Home Entertainment's Blu-ray.

The echoes of Pulp Fiction weren't lost on the critical community, which panned KM3T during its limited U.S. theatrical release in April 2015 as a pale imitation. I think they spoke too quickly. Stenders, whose previous film was the heartwarming and multi-award-winning Red Dog, was clearly looking to do something radically different. When the American producers who had been developing KM3T got the idea to set the story in Australia, Stenders leapt at the chance to make a film that was bloody, venal and adult—everything that Red Dog was not. The result may not be a landmark cinematic event, but it's a well-crafted piece of genre filmmaking. KM3T is as distinctively Australian as Stenders' previous work, but it springs from the same twisted impulse that powers works like Animal Kingdom, The Square and Jack Irish.

The major casting coup of KM3T was Simon Pegg, Star Trek's Scotty, Mission: Impossible's Benji, and the co-creator of Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and The World's End. Here, though, Pegg is cast against type as Charlie Wolfe, a detective/assassin of such heartless detachment that, in the film's opening scenes, he pauses during an execution to take a call from a new prospect. His answer, which becomes a running gag, is that he'll meet the potential client in one hour. Meanwhile, Charlie finishes the job at hand. The cleverness of casting Pegg as a professional sociopath is that he brings enormous reserves of goodwill to the screen, so that viewers stick with Charlie, even as he does one awful thing after another. Of course, it doesn't hurt that most of the people Charlie mistreats are scoundrels in their own right.

Not far from where Charlie takes that fateful call, an unhappily married couple named Alice and Jack Taylor (Alice Braga, Elysium, and Callan Mulvey) operate a bar and nightclub in the fictional resort town of Eagle's Nest. (The place is called a "hotel", but as explained on the commentary track, that label is commonly applied to night spots in Australia.) Jack is jealous, sullen and possessive, while Alice wants a different life. In various portions of KM3T, depending on the time frame, Alice's face is prominently bruised from a marital argument. Jack's sister, Lucy (Teresa Webb, Warm Bodies), works part-time behind the bar. She suspects Alice of cheating and thinks that her brother could do much better.

But Lucy has her own problems. Her husband, Nathan Webb (Sullivan Stapleton, Animal Kingdom), is a dentist with a gambling problem who owes thousands of dollars to a bookie. It's not particularly reassuring when, instead of the bookie's goons, Nathan and Lucy Webb receive a visit from the local law man, Bruce Jones (Australian acting legend Bryan Brown, best known here for F/X). Jones is the sort of amoral bastard who doesn't much care what laws are broken in his town, just as long as he gets his piece of the action—a point that he makes clear to the Webbs with the same kind of casual indifference that one might expect from a hired gun like Charlie Wolfe.

Another person in the mix is a gas station attendant named Dylan Smith, who is played by Luke Hemsworth, the oldest of the three Hemsworth brothers, the other two being Chris (Thor) and Liam (The Hunger Games). Although he is a local, Dylan initially seems to be an outsider to the various machinations in which the other characters are caught up. But since he's played by a Hemsworth, it's a safe bet that he either is, or will be, involved with one of the women before the film ends.

While the three "killings" of the title provide convenient chapter breaks, KM3T contains many other acts of wrongdoing, some of it mystifyingly elaborate: fraud, blackmail, theft, betrayal, and, of course, serial adultery—and not just because someone's heart leads them astray (most of these people have no heart). In Brian De Palma's dictum, corruption always looks fantastic, and Stenders has created a Down Under version of Candyland in which the vegetation is lush, the water is a gentle blue and the sand is soft and inviting—but it brings out the worst in people just as surely as the rough wilderness of that outback nightmare, Wake in Fright. Charlie Wolfe drives a classic Oldsmobile Toronado, a muscle car with a powerful engine whose growl is intended to signal the devil's approach, and yet somehow the vehicle's light green tint blends gorgeously into the countryside, just as Alice's classic VW looks like a red messenger of good cheer. For all of the dirty deeds onscreen, KM3T remains a stylistic bauble, a light-hearted exercise in mocking the baser instincts of people who aren't nearly as clever as they think (and a few who really should wise up).

Kill Me Three Times Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Despite the inclusion of a commentary with cinematographer Geoffrey Simpson (Shine ), specific information about the shooting format of Kill Me Three Times was not available, but post-production was completed on a digital intermediate, so that Magnolia's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray was presumably sourced directly from digital files. Consistent with the film's gleefully naughty aesthetic, the image is brightly colorful and sharply detailed, as if one were looking at digital snaps of a holiday at a twisted theme park. It's easy to make out tiny details like the hairs in Charlie Wolfe's mustache and the scars on Jack Taylor's face (he's obviously a brawler). Whether the scene is a rocky valley where a money drop goes bad or a palatial home of wood, stone and glass owned by one of Nathan Webb's patients, where crucial meetings occur, or Jack Taylor's office, with its safe stuffed with cash, there's always plenty to see, and the Blu-ray image show it with clarity.

Black levels, contrast and densities all look excellent. The film has been encoded at an average bitrate of 24.99 Mbps, which is good for digitally processed material. It is worth noting, however, that the disc appears to contain a second copy of the video file, without audio or subtitle tracks, for purposes unknown.

Kill Me Three Times Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

KM3T features a playful 5.1 sound mix, encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA, that shifts perspective with both the story and the camera's point of view. A particularly showy example involves a car that plummets over a cliff and then suddenly explodes in mid-air, except that the explosion is muted by distance, because the camera shifts to a long shot at that moment. Because the film itself is constantly changing perspective among its interconnected cast of characters, the soundscape follows suit, subtly heightening sounds that would be important to whatever character's POV dominates the story at that particular moment. The film's cars, which director Stenders says he "cast" as deliberately as the actors, have their own distinctive sounds, with Charlie's Toronado growling in low bass, while Alice's red VW Beetle putt-putts with quiet efficiency.

Dialogue is clear and properly placed. The guitar-infused soundtrack is by Johnny Klimek (Deadwood, Wolf Creek 2).

Kill Me Three Times Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentaries


• With Director Kriv Stenders and Cinematographer Geoffrey Simpson: This commentary was recorded shortly before the film's Australian premiere. Stenders does most of the talking here, focusing on the logistics of shooting the film, which were complicated by both the limited availability of Simon Pegg and the unusually rainy season in Western Australia, which required significant effort to match shots in post-production.


• With Director Kriv Stenders and Producers Larry Malkin, Tania Chambers and Share Stallings: This commentary was recorded the morning after the film's U.S. premiere, with Stenders regretting the timing, because he was nursing a hangover. Between much self-congratulation and many shared anecdotes, the most interesting information to emerge is the account of the many scenes deleted during editing. Although there are repeated references to their inclusion "on the DVD", only one deleted scene appears in the extras.



• The Making of Kill Me Three Times (1080p; 1.78:1; 18:16): This extended EPK covers much of the same ground as the two commentaries, but it has the added benefit of giving the actors an opportunity to discuss their characters. In addition to Stenders and Malkin, the participants are Simon Pegg, Bryan Brown, Alice Braga, Teresa Palmer, Sullivan Stapleton, Luke Hemsworth and Callan Mulvey.



• Deleted Scene (1080p; 2.40:1; 4:53): On the occasion of their anniversary, Jack forces wife Alice to sing a song for the crowd at the bar, which includes Lucy and Dylan.



• Q&A (1080p; 1.78:1; 14:29): Taped at the BFI London Film Festival in October 2014, the panel includes Pegg, producers Malkin, Chambers and Stallings and writer James McFarland (who says nothing).



• Storyboards (1080p; various; 5:16): A slideshow of selected storyboards.



• Behind the Scenes Photo Gallery (1080p; various): Eighteen photos.



• Poster Gallery (1080p; various): Seven variations, each featuring a different character from the film.



• Also from Magnolia Home Entertainment: The disc includes trailers for Skin Trade, The Deadlands and Serena, as well as promos for the Chideo web service and AXS TV. These also play at startup, where they can be skipped with the chapter forward button.



• BD-Live: As of this writing, attempting to access BD-Live gave the message "Check back later for updates".

Kill Me Three Times Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Australia has produced some memorable boogeymen, whether it's the Humungus in The Road Warrior or Mick Taylor in the Wolf Creek series, but the most deadly enemy in KM3T turns out to be sheer ineptitude. At the end of Stenders' twisty plot, you stand back and marvel at how every death is essentially a product of the victim's own carelessness, overconfidence or stupidity. A big reason why the film doesn't leave much impact is that everyone largely deserves what they get; there's no sense of loss as the credits roll, nor has anyone completed a "journey". Stenders has made a noir popcorn movie, and while that may not be a major achievement, it's an entertaining 90 minutes. Recommended, at least for a rental.