The Killer Elite
1975 film by Sam Peckinpah
The Killer Elite is a 1975 American action thriller film directed by Sam Peckinpah and written by Marc Norman and Stirling Silliphant, adapted from the Robert Syd Hopkins novel Monkey in the Middle. It stars James Caan and Robert Duvall as a pair of elite mercenaries who become bitter rivals and are caught on opposite sides of a proxy war over a foreign dignitary in the streets of San Francisco.
The cast also stars Mako, Arthur Hill, Bo Hopkins, Burt Young and Gig Young. Tom Clancy and Tiana Alexandra appear in their film debuts. The film represents the last collaboration between Peckinpah and soundtrack composer Jerry Fielding. It is considered to be among the first American films to feature ninjas.
The film received mixed reviews, with some critics perceiving Peckinpah as having "sold out" to commercial interests, while others criticized the film's use of martial arts tropes and imagery as contrived. Others, such as Pauline Kael, praised Peckinpah's direction and action sequences, and commended the film as a self-aware satire.
Plot
Mike Locken and George Hansen are longtime friends and professional partners, agents of Communications Integrity (ComTeg), a private intelligence agency that handles covert assignments for the CIA. At the end of their latest assignment, Hansen betrays Locken by killing their client and shooting Locken in the knee and elbow, effectively "retiring" him. After months of painful rehabilitation, Locken wears metal braces, but is able to walk with a cane.
“The Killer Elite” enters the record as 1975 film by Sam Peckinpah. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Killer, Elite and film can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1213823. VIAF identifies the subject as 257116453. The Library of Congress control number is no2018153013. 16 of 19 selected statements include explicit references; 16 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1975.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Killer Elite” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.