The Hit!
movie review by Bruce Cantwell
In Stephen Frears 1984 forerunner to the "happy mobster" films like PULP FICTION and its imitators, John Hurt turns in a nearly silent deadpan performance as a beleaguered hit man who is beginning to make mistakes.
Willie Parker (Terence Stamp), who ten years ago ratted out a fellow thug in order to dodge the slammer, is getting his comeuppance. A ragtag bunch of Spanish teens abduct him and bring him out into the country side where he meets his executioners in Braddock (Hurt) and Myron (Tim Roth). They've been instructed to take him to Paris to meet the man he betrayed before he sleeps with the fishes.
So we're off on a road trip with Willie, who knows the jig is up, Myron who is more a street tough than a hardened killer and the cold, analytical Braddock who knows he's in the middle of a fiasco.
The cops get Braddock's license plates, so he has to stop in Madrid to pick up another car at a colleague's apartment. When he arrives, he finds Harry (Bill Hunter) using the place as vacation lodgings.
Harry is a fellow criminal so he's not such a bad guy but you can't trust criminals, can you? Not with reward money on your head. This is precisely the kind of decision that Braddock isn't good at. He never betrays that he's losing control because he can't afford to lose the respect of Myron, whom he realizes he never should have hired, and Parker, a stoolie, but a fellow professional all the same.
Harry's lover Maggie fills out the Paris bound quartet in the role of hostage and what should be a deadly somber affair turns into a road picture.
The script by Peter Prince uses the kind of restraint that wouldn't fly in Hollywood. The missteps that Braddock makes aren't egregious. Braddock's prey is as interested as anyone in how the master killer is going to surmount his challenges and carry out his mission. We always know that something else will go wrong and that somehow he'll deal with it.
It's precisely that how that makes this movie tick.
If you enjoy this film, try Bulletproof Heart.
The Hit!
movie review by Bruce Cantwell
In Stephen Frears 1984 forerunner to the "happy mobster" films like PULP FICTION and its imitators, John Hurt turns in a nearly silent deadpan performance as a beleaguered hit man who is beginning to make mistakes.
Willie Parker (Terence Stamp), who ten years ago ratted out a fellow thug in order to dodge the slammer, is getting his comeuppance. A ragtag bunch of Spanish teens abduct him and bring him out into the country side where he meets his executioners in Braddock (Hurt) and Myron (Tim Roth). They've been instructed to take him to Paris to meet the man he betrayed before he sleeps with the fishes.
So we're off on a road trip with Willie, who knows the jig is up, Myron who is more a street tough than a hardened killer and the cold, analytical Braddock who knows he's in the middle of a fiasco.
The cops get Braddock's license plates, so he has to stop in Madrid to pick up another car at a colleague's apartment. When he arrives, he finds Harry (Bill Hunter) using the place as vacation lodgings.
Harry is a fellow criminal so he's not such a bad guy but you can't trust criminals, can you? Not with reward money on your head. This is precisely the kind of decision that Braddock isn't good at. He never betrays that he's losing control because he can't afford to lose the respect of Myron, whom he realizes he never should have hired, and Parker, a stoolie, but a fellow professional all the same.
Harry's lover Maggie fills out the Paris bound quartet in the role of hostage and what should be a deadly somber affair turns into a road picture.
The script by Peter Prince uses the kind of restraint that wouldn't fly in Hollywood. The missteps that Braddock makes aren't egregious. Braddock's prey is as interested as anyone in how the master killer is going to surmount his challenges and carry out his mission. We always know that something else will go wrong and that somehow he'll deal with it.
It's precisely that how that makes this movie tick.
If you enjoy this film, try Bulletproof Heart.
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