Wonderful character development!

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

I appreciate that Dolph is trying to make more thought-provoking films. I'm a huge Lundgren fan! I grew up with the guy. As much as he tries, a lot of his STD movies don't quite measure up to the effort. Dolph does these pretentious movies with a deep message, haunted by a shady past a bit too often. This one is hard to distinguish from the rest. Not much happens, making the pace extremely slow, and hard to endure at times. Another problems is how grim and melancholy it is. I had to do other things to cure the boredom I had at times during this movie. They add in emotional family drama that doesn't add anything. Those that yearn for some classic Lundgren action will be very disappointed as well. There are some OK fight scenes sprinkled in sporadically, but none of them wowed me. There are some unexciting shootouts, if you're into that. Lundgren looks bored on certain occasions. At times he seems really into it, others disenchanted. He sells the part by looking sullen and ashamed, but it didn't seem genuine to me. Rest of the cast are not really worth mentioning. This is mediocre stuff! Plain and simple. I would pass unless you're a die-hard Lundgren fan that has to see every movie he does. I'm one of those people4/10

There were those who called him Icarus. Everyone else knew him as a divorced father working for an investment company.But they didn't know his other side-his dark side. Because Icarus was at his best when he was killing people.For years, he'd worked as a sleeper agent in America-but when the Soviet Empire collapsed, he found himself in a foreign country with no one to trust.Determined to break from his dark past, he started over with a new identity. But you can only escape your past for so long....Another Lundgren movie, which looks good, but still proves hes not a good Director. In another assassin on the run movie, we move from place to place too quickly, characters appear and vanish without explanation, and the violence is too over the top.In the eighties, when someone was killed, they just fell to the floor, or had their neck snapped, nowadays, we are treated to a short close up of blood spurting from them. There is no need for this, and with Lundgrens roots set firmly in the eighties, he should no this.There are a couple of good set pieces, and Lundgren does know how to film a good set piece, but when the story is so lame, you soon become bored.It's not the worse action movie out there, but it takes itself far too seriously, when an injection of cheese could have lifted this from mediocrity.And the ending sets us up for a sequel, which to be fair, would be a bad idea.

It makes sense for somebody whose a veteran actor of a specific genre to eventually be a producer, writer or director for said movie. Many a genre stalwart-Angela Bettis, Robert Englund, and Bruce Campbell have all taken a part of directing films, for better or for worse. So for someone like Dolph Lungren, it makes sense, as he's been a veteran of macho action films for a long time, and has already directed some titles in said genre. Which leads to this film, "The Killing Machine." Dolph stars as Edward Genn, a divorced father and investment broker, whose living a double life. You see, he also used to be a dangerous KGB assassin known as "Icarus." Well, the past comes back to haunt him in the Russian mob, and when they go after his family, it's time to strike back.As you can tell, "The Killing Machine" is pretty much your meat and potatoes style action/revenge movie. Thankfully, said meal isn't unappetizing, though it's certainly not spectacular. This comes from Anchor Bay, who at least seem to have an eye when it comes to direct to DVD action fair, in that said movies have good production values. It's also got enough bloody violence to satiate fans of mindless action fare, and it's all done with relish without feeling like overkill. Lundgren himself does a fine job as the former assassin, doing what he can with the rather basic material (though I had to turn on the subtitles whenever he delivered a monologue), and it's always fun to see Bo Svenson, here acting with a very unconvincing Russian accent. That's just fine though, as it adds to the escapist tone of the whole thing.If there are any problems, it's the direction and a few other performances. Sure, Lundgren will always be a convincing bad ass, but as a director, there isn't a whole lot about his style that sticks out (though it's nice to see someone not resort to hyperactive editing choices), as it's all done straightforward to the point of feeling a bit vanilla. Also, Stefanie Von Pfetten and Lindsay Maxwell deliver performances that could only be described as "unsatisfactory at best." They're really bad here, and kinda drag thing down whenever they show up, though they are pretty attractive.As a whole, "The Killing Machine" isn't bad for a weekend afternoon action movie. It's serviceable enough, though it's more passable than it is exciting to be honest.

Businessman Edward Genn (Dolph Lundgren) is actually a former KGB agent who defected to the US just before the Soviet Union collapsed and has been making his real living as a hit-man-for-hire. Naturally, he didn't tell his ex-wife (Stefanie von Pfetten), who he has a daughter with. But she finds out soon enough when her family is in the crossfire of a mob war led by Eddie's old comrade Vadim (Bo Svenson). This is Lundgren's sixth effort as a director and, surprisingly, it is his worst effort behind the camera so far thanks mostly to a lame script and that pesky jittery camera work. The prospect of Dolph teaming with fellow Swede Svenson is enticing, but they really only have 5 minutes on screen. There are lots of fights/shootings but Dolph films them all terribly, which is strange given his penchant for well-shot action displayed previous to this. The worst is he has fallen into the Hollywood cliché of shaky-cam/crash zooms, even during quiet dialog scenes. Not as bad as Stallone did with THE EXPENDABLES, but still annoying.