YMMV / Shoot to Kill

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• Complete Monster: The thief known only as Steve takes a jeweler's household hostage to force him to steal diamonds, executing the maid to prove a point and murdering the wife to punish the FBI for interfering. Later murdering a fisherman and taking his identity, Steve murders all others in the fishing party save for the guide Sarah. Later planning to murder her, too, Steve resorts to hostages he is happy to try to kill, including a woman and her child.
• Cult Classic: The film more than earned back its budget when it first came out but has fallen into obscurity since, and hardcore cinephiles can go a decade or longer without ever hearing of it. It isn't the best-known movie of any of the people who act in it, but almost everyone who does see it is unanimous in praising the cast, story, and cinematography and is quick to marvel about how it isn't better-known.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Of the fishermen, Norm is pretty well liked for his bumbling City Mouse nature and friendship with Sarah. His death about halfway through the film is a notable Gut Punch.
  • Hsu only appears in the last twenty minutes of the movie, but is fairly well-liked for his Reasonable Authority Figure moments and interactions with Stantin and Knox.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Some fans would have liked to see either 1) Steve trick Norman into thinking he was a cop while the whole group remained alive for a while or 2) Steve to have kept up the deception that Norm died in an accident for a while rather than murdering the others immediately afterward.
  • After all of the talk about how in love Knox and Sarah are, not to mention both being tough and competent throughout the movie, they share just a few seconds of screen time at the end of the movie and never get to be a Battle Couple against the villain or reflect on their experience together in a heartfelt reunion.
• The Woobie: Berger the jeweler. A kidnapper takes his wife and maid hostage and then kills his dog to intimidate him into robbing his own store. He's an emotional wreck every second he's onscreen, and his wife and maid are killed anyway.

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