MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Killer Image’ a Routine Thriller

“Killer Image” (at the Sunset 5) is as trite as its title. A young free-lance photographer (Rick Austin), nosing about the private life of a veteran senator (M. Emmet Walsh), not only witnesses him with his young mistress, but also her subsequent murder by the senator’s psychopath brother (Michael Ironside). He is spotted by Ironside while Ironside is dumping her corpse over a dam. In short order Ironside kills the photographer and is trying to frame the photographer’s brother-partner (John Pyper-Ferguson) for murder.

The film is at all times entirely proficient--and equally dull. There is absolutely nothing fresh or insightful--nothing that would keep the film from seeming interchangeable with countless routine thrillers that preceded it. Worse still, Canadian director David Winning, who also collaborated in adapting Stan Edmonds’ story, takes the threadbare material with far more solemnity than it deserves.

The irony and disappointment here is that Winning’s exceptionally promising first feature “Storm” (1989) was a terrific dark comedy about a couple of university students, off on a weekend in the woods, who cross paths with three bank robbers about to dig up $750,000 they had buried 40 years before. Winning is too talented to settle for the likes of “Killer Image” (rated R for violence, and for some language and sensuality).

‘Killer Image’

John Pyper-Ferguson: Max Oliver

Michael Ironside: Luther Kane

M. Emmet Walsh: Sen. Jonathan Kane

Krista Errickson: Shelley

A Paramount Home Video release of Groundstar Entertainment/Storia Films production. Director David Winning. Producers Winning, Rudy Barichello, Bruce Harvey. Executive producer Rene Malo. Screenplay by Winning, Stan Edmonds, Jaron Summers; from a story by Edmonds. Cinematographer Dean Bennett. Editor Alan Collins. Music Stephen Foster.Art director Bruce Sinki. Set decorator Catherine Green. Sound George Tarrant. Running time: 1 hour, 37 minutes.

MPAA-rated R (for violence, and for some language and sensuality).