First Kill
starring Hayden Christensen, Gethin Anthony, Megan Leonard, Tyler Jon Olson, Shea Buckner, William DeMeo and Bruce Willis
written by Nick Gordon
directed by Steven C. Miller
Rating: ◊◊◊◊◊
First Kill is about a husband and wife who take their bullied son from the city to the countryside, where the father grew up, for a bit of away time, male bonding and personal development-through hunting time. The father, Will (played by Hayden Christensen), waxes poetic about the existential qualities of hunting deer and bagging your first deer, about the skill, the self-control, the feeling of power over nature, the feeling of humility before nature, the feeling of thanks to Mother Earth for Her bounty. Yadda, yadda, yadda. To me hunting, like fishing, is just killing animals. There’s no call to wax poetic about it.
While off on their hunt, Will and his son, Danny (played by Tyler Jon Olson) witness a shooting in the woods between two bandits who recently robbed the local bank. With one robber gunned down, Danny makes enough noise to attract the attention of the other, who then starts firing his pistol indiscriminately towards the old barn that the father and son are sheltering behind in the rain. To protect himself and his son, Will shoots and kills the shooter with his hunting rifle. Will inspects the body. Oh, my God, it’s a cop! I just shot a cop! Never mind that he’s a bad cop! And look, the other guy isn’t dead yet! What to do?
At this point normal people should drop all pretense, acknowledge the depth of the shit their standing in, and call the police. The job of the police is to help. But no, that’s not what they do in the movies. In the movies they say, no one knows about this yet. Let’s just try to figure it out by ourselves.
Wrong. That’s when I stopped watching the movie, a little more than 30-minutes into it. I’m done watching that kind of stupidity.
By the way, Hayden Christensen is the Canadian actor who played and received bad reviews for his portrayal of adult Anakin Skywalker in two episodes of the Star Wars series over a decade ago. I also saw him in the 2008 science fiction film shot partly in Tokyo called Jumper (directed by Doug Liman), featuring time travel, or time “jumps.” Christensen has matured a lot as an actor since the days when he played Anakin Skywalker. But this don’t-call-the-cops-we-can-figure-it-out-by-ourselves plot is rubbish. Call the cops, please! That’s what they’re there for.
But I could be wrong.