Good start, but then it gets ruined

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

(There are Spoilers) Looking out of it and like he hasn't slept for a few days Pat enters the noisy and dangerous "Killoran Tavern" or "Killer's" for short. The hang-out of the notorious Queens mobster Bobby-Fitz. With a number of fights going on and nobody noticing him Pat pulls his gun out of his jacket and points it at Bobby-Fitz who's arguing with one of his hoods. Only to have the co-owner of the place Mary Killoran step in front of him and then slowly puts it back.Mary thinking Pat is looking for a job at the bar offers him to open it up the next morning as the bartender since Teddy, who works the bar at the "Killoran Tavern", is taking the day off. It later turns out that Pat isn't really Pat "the drifter" but NYPD Detective Desmond Flynn. Det. Flynn is on the run and on the lamb from the police and in a way himself in the brutal murder of his partner Det. Thomas Hugh by the Bobby-Fitz gang.Both Det. Flynn & Hugh were off-duty when they tried to stage a buy and bust,which is against NYPD regulations,without calling for back-up on a member of Bobby-Fitz's gang. The buy and bust backfired with Det. Hugh ending up shot dead. Desmond wanting to get the person responsible for his partner's death went to "Killers" to gun down Bobby-Fitz only to later learn that it wasn't him who was responsible for Hugh's murder; it was Bobby-Fitz's second in command Pooka. Pooka is also planing to knock off Bobby-Fitz and take over his organization and introduce illegal drugs with the help of NYC drug kingpin Lacido distribute the drugs into the neighborhood. The movie "Killers" comes across like a TV or Broadway play not like a full length motion picture. It's that very reason that make it as interesting, and effective, as it is. All of the members of the Bobby-Fitz gang end up leaving him to his fate. But at the same time by following the deranged Pooka they as well end up dead along with him as a reward. Bobby-Fitz who has a very strong interest in taking over "Killoran's Tavern" has it owner Mary's drunk and irresponsible brother Jimmy set up in a card sting. It's there where he's taken for $10,000.00 thus having no choice but to sign over the place to Bobby-Fitz if he want's to stay out of the hospital. Desmond trying to keep Bobby-Fitz from destroying what both Jimmy and Mary worked all their lives for, and what their father left to them, blows his cover as a cop. This leads Desmond to end up badly beaten and almost shot to death, execution style, outside in a deserted Queens park. Desmond who then escaped from the Pooka mobsters goes back to his room at his friend Murf's to get his girlfriend Liz to come along with him. Desmond needs them to him help stop Pooka and his mobster friends from murdering both Mary and her sick, and now almost suicidal, brother Jimmy before it's too late. Fine acting by both Hugh O'Gorman and Kathleen Warner as Desmond Flynn and Mary Killoran as well as Ed Dennehy and Todd Cosgerove as Mary's brother Jimmy and mob boss Bobby-Fitz. Their acting gives the film "Killers" the punch that it needs to get your attention and overlook it's low-budget and almost soap opera-like look. You also have to give credit to actor Todd Cosgrove who plays the vicious Pooka. Cosgrove is so good that it's hard to believe that he's really acting but is actually the murderous psycho that he's portraying in the movie.

So many talented people are involved in this production, a low-budget misfire, that one might wish to hesitate before describing its faults, but such yet must be done. Completed in 1995 in the incorporated village of Farmingdale in Nassau County, utilizing video tape and many local players, the work has the sequestered tone of a staged play. Killer's, the name of a Far Rockaway tavern owned by Mary Killoran with her brother Jimmy, the pair also maintaining lodging in upstairs apartments. When alcoholic Jimmy becomes arrears for ten grand in gambling debt to crime kingpin Robert Fitzgerald, "Bobby-Fitz", whose operation includes prostitution and loan sharking, in addition to illegal gambling, Bobby assumes Jimmy's half of the bar. However, Mary will not sell her portion to Bobby, thereby damaging his plan for using the establishment to launder mob moneys. At this time, an undercover narcotics officer is murdered, with evidence implicating Bobby-Fitz as the shooter, and when the slain lawman's partner, played by Hugh O'Gorman, tries to exact revenge while becoming a bartender at the tavern, a violent showdown looms. All of the cast work hard, with only O'Gorman hamming a bit, and there are valuable contributions from Roshelle Berliner for nicely detailed production design, Tristan Gros for effective camera-work, and Thomas Rondinella for defined editing; however, sound ambiance and synching leave something to be desired, being marked by uneven quality. An obtrusive score only detracts and distracts, with continuity difficulties widespread, e.g., during a film wherein virtually every character is shot, beaten, stabbed, or bludgeoned, the amounts and placement of blood come and go in erratic fashion, as does the physical condition of those wounded. As is so often the case, the storyline is hamstrung by a script that is overwhelmingly lacking in logic, product of producer/director/scriptor Robert Hanlon. A DVD version provides naught in the way of extras for this film that is not lengthy; it merely seems so.