Directed by Kriv Stenders
Written by James McFarland
Release Date: 10 April 2015
Running Time: 90 minutes
Editor’s Rating: 2 botched car explosions out of 4


Australia is a wonderful place. It’s pretty, it’s got wonderful scenery, a video game costs a billion dollars and is completely censored because of a crap import/export system, and it’s got all of the killer things: Killer spiders, killer reptiles, killer bees (probably), killer dogs (definitely), killer sharks (duh), killer scorpions, killer condiments (Vegemite), the list goes on and on. So by that utterly flawless and not at all stereotypical logic, it would make sense that its people are just as crazy and killer, right? Welcome to the town of Eagle’s Nest.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you cinematic proof that this is so. Kill Me Three Times tells the story of several people who are very dumb and want to make money just by making other people not alive anymore. The end result ends just about as badly as you’d expect.

The film has one of those complex, hivework plots that is only compounded by the film’s kind of odd and very confusing choice to tell the story kind of backwards, a la Memento. So it’s not completely backwards, it’s more like in medias res, but they just keep medias-ing to keep the audience guessing, even though if told from a traditional standpoint, the story would be confusing enough as it is.

As far as the acting in the film goes, the characters are pretty straightforward. We have a blue-collar, white knight type played by Luke Hemsworth, a naggy, annoying wife played by professional Kristen Stewart doppelganger Teresa Palmer, a milquetoast husband played by Bryan Brown, a sleazy bar/motel owner played by Callan Mulvey, and his battered wife played by Alice Braga. Hemsworth and Braga play the straight couple in the film while everyone else snipes and jabs around and at them with guns and cusses.

While the film really tries hard to be a caper/crime flick with attitude, that aspect only really shines when Pegg is on-screen and trying to sort out/laugh at the giant crap pile the other characters are getting themselves into. He’s really the only interesting guy here, and he spends most of the movie trying to escape Eagle’s Nest. If the coolest guy in the movie can’t stand being where the movie is, how can we expect to want to stay there that long?

Even for its flaws, Kill Me Three Times is a quick, fun little romp through a flick that wants to be a sassy film-noir-small-time-crime flick and for the most part, succeeds. It’s like a pulp novel from the fifties updated for the modern day, flaws and all--not unlike that other film that did that same thing, but actually left most of the flaws out. God, what was it called? Pulp something?

I dunno. What do I look like, some big kahuna?

**I watched this film via a streaming service I pay for. I was not compensated for this review.**