’s review of kill Jackie lands hard on Catherine Zeta-Jones’s star vehicle, calling it “This preposterous nonsense probably had high intentions – and then realised it’s easier to replace credible writing with gunfights, car chases and ear-bitings.” The film puts Jackie Price at the center of a thriller built around an art business, assassins and a plot that jumps from Bilbao to London.
Catherine Zeta-Jones Leads Kill Jackie to October 2 Premiere frames the film as a comeback vehicle, but the review’s bigger point is sharper: the setup is elaborate, the execution is not. Jackie Price has spent 20 years building a successful art business using customs benefits and tax reliefs in certain exclusionary zones, then storing art in a warehouse and inviting rich buyers to view, bid on and buy it.
Jackie Price’s 20-year setup
Over 20 years, Jackie Price turns the sort of freeport arrangement that normally sits in the background of art-dealing into the engine of the story. In the film’s logic, the business is not just a backdrop: it explains how she acquires art, how it is stored, and why the film can move between commerce and criminal threat without pausing for a lecture.
The opening image makes the pivot brutal. Jackie Price exits a lift in London and brains a security guard with a glass bowl, then the story cuts back to Bilbao two days earlier, where she is still living what the review calls a boring life before the action escalates. That back-and-forth gives the film a timeline, but it also puts the viewer in a place the review clearly thinks the script never fully earns.
Karenina and the Seven Demons
Karenina enters as the threat multiplier. She says she is moving into assassination work, is on probation with the Seven Demons, and Jackie Price is her next job. The review also describes the Seven Demons as “the most feared of all assassin gangs,” which gives the film its criminal hierarchy without ever making the world feel grounded.
Once the dead body appears in the flat across from Jackie Price’s home and masked intruders surround her before she can flee, the film tries to shift from art-world procedural into survival thriller. Hattie Hook, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Daniel Ings and Charlie move around that structure as Jackie leaves with her assistant Charlie and lawyer Sam, but the review’s complaint is that the machinery keeps outrunning the writing.
Gunfights over credible writing
The review compares Kill Jackie to Killing Eve, but the comparison seems to end there. It says the film leans on gunfights, car chases and ear-bitings instead of credible writing, which leaves the action doing work that the script should have done first.
For viewers drawn to Catherine Zeta-Jones, the practical read is simple: this is a thriller with a sharp premise and a loud execution, not a careful one. Jackie Price’s freeport business, Karenina’s probation and the London opening all point toward a story with structure, but the review argues the film keeps choosing noise over clarity, and that is where the case against it lands.
