Killerman Is a Brutal Crime Thriller You Probably Missed
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I love high-energy crime thrillers. Movies like Uncut Gems and Running Scared are right in my wheelhouse, which is probably why Killerman worked so well for me.
This little-known 2019 thriller stars Liam Hemsworth as Moe Diamond, a New York City money launderer and street hustler who gets pulled into a drug deal he knows he should stay away from. Things go bad almost immediately, he ends up in a violent car crash and wakes up with no memory of who he is or how much trouble he is actually in.
That is where Killerman gets interesting.
Amnesia Is Usually the Setup. Here It Is the Problem
This is not really a mystery about a guy slowly piecing together his identity. Moe wakes up knowing almost nothing, but the criminal life he built before the accident is still very much waiting for him.
He owes dangerous people money. He has drugs and cash that other dangerous people want. He does not know who he can trust, who he screwed over or exactly why everyone seems determined to either find him or kill him.
That gives Killerman a great little hook. What happens if you are a career criminal, lose your memory and suddenly have to survive the mess the old version of you created?
The movie becomes a pressure cooker pretty quickly. Every new decision seems to make things worse, and Moe spends most of the movie several steps behind everyone around him. He is not Danny Ocean and he definitely is not John Wick. Half the time he does not even know why he is running.
I like that.
Think Uncut Gems, Only Meaner and Messier
The easiest comparison is Uncut Gems. Both movies live in this grimy New York world of money, bad decisions and desperate people who keep digging themselves deeper.
The funny thing is that Killerman is not actually copying it. Both movies premiered at Telluride on the same day, so neither could have been reacting to the other.
They are also very different movies once you get past the surface similarities. Uncut Gems is controlled chaos. Every piece feels precisely engineered to make your blood pressure climb. Killerman is rougher, messier and much more blunt force.
It is also considerably nastier. There are moments in this movie that are going to be stomach turning for some viewers, and it has a pulpy brutality that Uncut Gems never really goes for. That roughness is part of what I like about it.
New York Feels Filthy in the Best Possible Way
Writer and director Malik Bader gives Killerman a legitimately grimy look. The movie feels like it was made in alleys, pawn shops, cramped back rooms and dirty parking lots where you can practically smell the sweat in the room.
There is not a ton of exposition explaining how this criminal world works. Bader mostly drops you into it and lets the people, locations and escalating problems fill in the blanks. The criminals feel desperate, the cops feel dangerous and even the bags of money somehow look heavy.
That atmosphere does a lot of the work because Killerman is at its best when it feels less like a polished Hollywood thriller and more like you accidentally wandered into a part of New York you probably should not be in.
Liam Hemsworth Is Better Than You Might Expect
Hemsworth deserves some credit here because Moe Diamond is not an obvious hero role. He is not especially clever, and he does not suddenly discover that he is secretly the world’s greatest assassin. For most of the movie, he is confused, injured and improvising his way through increasingly bad situations.
Hemsworth commits to that without trying to make Moe too cool, and he is surprisingly convincing when the movie gets ugly. This is easily one of the more interesting roles I have seen him take on.
Malik Bader Has a Thing for Desperate Criminals
If you like Killerman, Malik Bader is worth looking into because this kind of dirty street-level crime story is very much his thing.
His first movie, Street Thief, is a faux-documentary about a Chicago burglar that feels authentic enough that I initially thought I was watching a real documentary. He followed that with Cash Only, a nasty little Detroit crime thriller about an Armenian landlord whose financial problems drag him deeper and deeper into the criminal world.
You can feel Bader trying to take that same style and scale it up with Killerman. He has a bigger star, a bigger city, more action and much higher stakes, but the desperate people making catastrophic decisions are still there.
Unfortunately, he has not directed another feature since Killerman, which is a shame. He clearly has a knack for this particular type of crime movie.
It Is Not Perfect, but It Has a Pulse
I do not want to oversell Killerman. It has problems, and we can start with that title. I hate the title Killerman. It sounds like some generic straight-to-video action movie and does a terrible job of telling you what kind of movie this actually is.
The movie itself is messy too. It is pulpy, brutal and occasionally ridiculous. But it also has more personality than a lot of cleaner and more expensive thrillers that show up on streaming every week.
I would recommend it to fans of Uncut Gems, Good Time, Running Scared and Dragged Across Concrete. It is not quite as good as those movies, but it lives in the same neighborhood.
It is a bruised-knuckle crime thriller with a strong hook, a grimy atmosphere, a few nasty surprises and enough momentum to keep you locked in.
Prefer to Watch Instead?
If you would rather watch than read, I cover Killerman in the video below with clips from the movie and a closer look at why this grimy little crime thriller worked for me.
Watch my video review on Killerman
