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Directed by:
George Armitage
Written by:
Tom Jankiewicz, D.V. DeVincentis, Steve Pink, John Cusack
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| Released: |
1997 |
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| Genre: |
BLACK COMEDY
CRIME
THRILLER
COMEDY
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| Origin: |
US |
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| Length: |
107 |
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What do you say if you return to your old school for a reunion after ten years, everyone asks what you do for a living, and you happen to be a professional hit-man? |
Reviewed by Chris Tookey
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That’s just one of the problems of social etiquette facing Martin Q. Blank (John Cusack, pictured). He has other homecoming problems - like explaining to his high-school sweetheart (played by the gorgeous and talented Minnie Driver) why he abandoned her on prom night. Not only is she rightly resentful; she’s got one hell of a right hook. Another local difficulty is that he has one last assassination to perform before turning over a new leaf, and he’s being trailed by two Feds, a rival hit-man (Dan Aykroyd) and a Basque terrorist who seems awfully keen on murdering him.
A bright, quirky comedy with an ironic take on American culture. One of the jokes is that almost all of Cusack’s high-school contemporaries have become amoral “hit men” in some sense - estate agents, insurance salesmen, security guards . The high-school reunion is hideously naff and authentic.
Refreshingly, the film takes its hero’s existential crisis with several pinches of salt. Being very American, our hero thinks his feelings of remorse are some kind of psychiatric problem, rather than the natural outcome of performing horrendous acts of violence. Not surprisingly - but very amusingly - his shrink (Alan Arkin) is terrified of him.
Wittily scripted by Cusack and some friends, the film’s in the fashionably cool mode of American comedy, smartly directed by George Armitage, and deserves to be a cult hit. It might have done even better, were it not for the title, which makes it sound as though it’s in a foreign language.
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, Minnie Driver 
