Clive Owen as Spike in "Killer Elite."

In Killer Elite, Jason Statham battles Clive Owen's facial hair.

No, it doesn't sound like a fair fight to us either.

"I take full responsibility for it," says a now-clean-shaven Owen of his unfortunate moustache. "In my defense, if you look at pictures of the UK from that period, everyone had one."

Sure, but everyone had a van too. Does that make it right?

Anyway. Opening Friday, the 1970s/1980s-era thriller casts Statham and Owen as retired assassins pitted against each other during the waning days of Burt Reynolds' career. Oh, and the Cold War was winding down too.

Invariably this requires the two actors to pummel, kick and chop each other into bloody near-oblivion.

Statham, of course, could snap your neck with a significant glare. Owen -- slab of lip bristles or not -- is no slouch either, having compiled impressive body counts in such films as Sin City, The International and King Arthur.

"I approach those scenes like a dialogue scene. You want them to be totally believable and be logical. They're acting as much as anything. It's great to do a fight scene with someone like Jason because he's so good at that stuff and it's a big strength of his. And technically, I'm pretty good. And when you've got two guys who are good at that and you can trust each other, you can really go for it."

Still, the action wasn't what attracted Owen to the story.

"The thing that fascinated me was that thing about what happens to (SAS soldiers) after they leave ... They're trying to live a normal life but no one around them really understands what they've been through."

He says the movie, inspired by a non-fiction account of British special forces in the Middle East, is "morally ambiguous throughout. It's not a good guy/bad guy film."

Killer Elite was one of two films Owen headlined at this month's Toronto International Film Festival, the other being the supernatural shocker Intruders. Indeed, few actors have been as prolific as the 46-year-old since his breakthrough in 1998's Croupier.

So understandably, he's now looking forward to a break.

"It's going to be great to just spend time with the kids," says Owen, who has two daughters, ages 14 and 11, with his wife, Sarah-Jane Fenton.

"I travel so much and do so much that when there's down time, it's about doing as much with them as possible. I can take them to school and have some proper time with them for awhile."

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