Robert De Niro, Jason Statham, Clive Owen, Dominic Purcell In Killer Elite

Robert De Niro has teamed up with actors Jason Statham, Clive Owen and Lachy Hulme for Australian action thriller Killer Elite. But that’s not the end of news!

Dominic Purcell (Prison Break), actress Yvonne Strahovski, Aden Young, Ben Mendelsohn and Firass Dirani have also joined the cast of upcoming Garry McKendry’s film, a story about the group of former British special forces members are being hunted by assassins. Interesting list of names, you must agree.

The story is based on the Ranulph Fiennes‘ novel, and here’s the official book synopsis: “Founded in England in the late 1960s, the so-called Committee, otherwise known as the Feather Men, was a vigilante group dedicated to solving crimes that the police could not. This absorbing book details their 14-year struggle to capture the Clinic, a band of contract killers who murdered four former British soldiers.

The background was this: Amr bin Issa, sheikh of a tribe in Oman, had lost four sons in his country’s civil wars. Although tradition demanded that he avenge their deaths, he did nothing and was deposed as sheikh. Then he arranged with the Clinic to kill the servicemen believed responsible for the deaths of his sons.

How the hired killers went about their task (making each murder look like an accident), how they were finally apprehended and how this case in 1990 also put an end to the Committee–or so Fiennes (Hell on Ice) contends its members have assured him–makes for a highly suspenseful tale. Readers will be given pause, however, by Fiennes’s wont to romanticize vigilante justice and his assertion that for 20 years the British “have had good reason to be grateful for the Feather Men’s protective presence.”

So, Jason Statham is set to play a former Navy Seal blackmailed to kill a special forces operative after his mentor and friend, played by De Niro, is captured by an Arab sheik. Owen will play “a senior field operative and member of a clandestine group protecting former special forces soldiers and their families” and Strahvoski plays (guess who) Statham’s love interest.

Like we said, Gary McKendry is directing the picture with Steve Chasman, Michael Boughen and Sigurjon Sighvatsson and filming has already started in Melbourne, Australia.

Killer Elite really has an elite cast, so we guess nothing could go wrong. We’ll keep an eye on this one, so stay tuned!