'Killing Season'

If movies could kill, this one would have the potential to maim. Directed by Mark Steven Johnson ("Simon Birch"), "Killing Season" stars two relentless men, Robert De Niro and John Travolta, bringing every fiber of their relentlessness to go at each other tooth and nail. Sheer heaven for those who go for that kind of thing, but a little wearing on the nerves of the rest of us.

De Niro plays Benjamin Ford, a veteran who fought in Bosnia and has now secluded himself in the Appalachian Mountains to forget his past. Ford's caring son Chris (Milo Ventimiglia) tries to woo his dad back into the land of the living, but the old man would rather go hunting. When Benjamin meets another hunter on the road, calling himself Emil Kovac (Travolta) and speaking with a heavy Eastern Bloc accent, he decides to trust him. Emil is invited into Benjamin's cabin for a drink, and in the morning, the pair decide to go on separate hunts and hook up later. But Benjamin gets a wake-up call when an arrow comes whistling by. It's Emil, letting his host know where his true intentions lie.

After that, it becomes a grisly tit-for-tat of mayhem and torture, with the emphasis on the torture. A word of warning: Even if your brain chooses to forget what you witnessed here, your kneecaps may never get over the trauma.