When I did a quick keyword search on just the word assassin on IMDB, the Internet Movie Database (best resource ever!), it returned 445 hits. Some of those line items were empty, which is very curious, but they were missing other key films I consider as assassin movies, such as La Femme Nikita (1990), the Whole Nine Yards (2000), and The Boondock Saints (1999). A keyword search for the terms professional and assassin yielded just 12 hits. Obviously, IMDB doesn't index its movie resources all that effectively, and perhaps they rely on user inputs, which can be notoriously faulty.
Here's a very incomplete listing of recent films on assassins or professional hit men (and women!) that filtered through my consciousness as I thought about this topic:
- In Bruges (2008)
- Pineapple Express (2008); a comedy, yes, but includes hit men
- Wanted (2008)
- Bangkok Dangerous (2008)
- Hitman (2007); based on videogame
- No Country for Old Men (2007)
- You Kill Me (2007)
- Smokin' Aces (2006)
- The Matador (2005)
- Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2005)
- Collateral (2004)
- Usher (2004); comedy about a hit man turned movie theater attendant
- Kill Bill, vols 1 and 2 (2003-04)
- the Bourne trilogy about the amnesiatic hit man (2002-07)
- Assassination Tango (2002)
- The Road to Perdition (2002)
- The Whole Nine Yards (2000)
- The Boondock Saints (1999)
- Grosse Pointe Blank (1997)
- The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996); Geena Davis takes a turn as a female Bourne
- Assassins (1995)
- The Professional (1994)
- Pulp Fiction (1994)
- In the Line of Fire (1993)
- Unforgiven (1992)
- La Femme Nikita (1990)
- The Eiger Sanction (1975)
First and foremost, in the majority of these films, Hollywood shows the hit man in a favorable light and/or makes the assassin the hero/anti-hero. I'm sure Hollywood types love to romanticize the idea of the hit man; it must also generate some edgy tension in terms of making the audience care about a person they really should hate very much -- an assassin who takes a precious human life for nothing more than money. It also doesn't get much easier for a writer to show the classic man vs. man or man vs. self conflicts than by using an assassin, does it? Some of the greatest heroes in Hollywood, like Al Pacino's Michael Corleone in the first Godfather (1972) movie, took turns as killers. Who can forget the line, "Leave the gun. Take the cannoli"?
Not too many of the movies listed above actually make the assassin be the bad guy or antagonist in the storyline. Clint Eastwood's In the Line of Fire does, as Clint's Secret Service agent tries to keep John Malkovich from assassinating the President. It's hard to tell when Hollywood and other movie producers really started making the anti-hero be the protagonist (obviously, I never went to film school), but La Femme Nikita, The Professional, and Pulp Fiction took that idea and ran with it.
La Femme Nikita always struck me as being a landmark film for several reasons. First, the idea that the French government would take a female punker and turn her into a professional killer was intriguing. The relationship between Nikita and her handler was very complex, and made for a strong storyline. I omitted the Bridget Fonda remake, Point of No Return (1993), from the list above because it was awful in comparison to the original. The writer and director of Nikita, Luc Besson, also wrote and directed The Professional, also called Leon in foreign markets.
Something about The Professional always struck me as being a little bit off. At the end of the movie, no matter how much Besson wanted me to care sincerely about what happened to Jean Reno's character, I just couldn't muster that sadness. After all, Leon was a killer, and a very good one at that. Gary Oldman was definitely the bad guy in the movie, so Leon was supposed to be the father figure for Natalie Portman and so much more. Maybe my own American sensibilities couldn't fathom the purported romance between Leon and the 12 year old Mathilda, or maybe I just didn't want to get that, as objectionable as it is. I've read that European audiences were much more open to that idea, which might change the whole character of the movie. At any rate, I was never sold 100% on The Professional.
The next movie that really portrayed assassins in a favorable light was Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. I'll never forget the review I read at the time that pointed out the relationship between the two assassins played by John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson. That relationship was grounded in the dialogue between the two, and Tarantino has always been known for his dialogue.* The assassins played a significant part in the movie, to be sure. But the movie was not just about the two hit men, and there was a little redemption at the end for Samuel L. Jackson's character, which made it easier to stomach. It's probably the best movie I've seen that is not already in my DVD collection at home.
* Forget all the obvious examples from Tarantino movies, such as the opening of Reservoir Dogs (1992), or any lines from True Romance (1993), which he wrote. Those are classics, yes. But for me, the all-time Tarantino quote came from an otherwise forgettable movie called Sleep with Me (1994). If you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about. I'm not going to cut and paste the whole thing here, but you can read it yourself at IMDB here. If you haven't seen the movie, it's not worth your time to watch it just for the Tarantino performance.
I absolutely loved Grosse Pointe Blank with John Cusack precisely because the killer was so conflicted about his role in society. He continually says that "It's not me" when talking about him fulfilling a contract to kill someone. It's not personal, although the intended victim might not feel the same way. The movie works on so many levels because it does incorporate so much psychology into the storyline, and not just in the scenes with Cusack and Alan Arkin's Dr. Oatman character. When the hit man realizes he can truly never go home again (it's been converted to a Ultimart!), it is a classic scene. It also touches on the entire conflict of whether we allow our jobs or our professional lives to dictate how we are seen in society, of defining who we are as a person. It works on so many levels, not least of which because anyone who has returned for a high school reunion can totally relate.
Given all the examples listed above, I have to say that the "assassin as good guy" plot device is getting a bit tired. In Bruges was artfully done, and the acting was top-notch. The idea that a hit man could be completely conflicted about his career choice, and made even more so because of an unintended victim during a hit on a Catholic priest, was more realistic. In the movie I just watched, Smokin' Aces, one of the German hit men used a dead man's lips (played by Ben Affleck, and how on earth did he keep from laughing while someone else was manipulating his lips and eyelids?!) to request absolution from his victim. It boggles the mind, and was perhaps the deepest part of the movie.
I couldn't help but think that I would have really liked Smokin' Aces much more about 10-15 years ago. I'm sure I've matured in the intervening time, because the overly stylized violence just made me cringe. It was very juvenile in nature, and even though the cast did a very good job with the story, I wouldn't watch it again. That's been true for some of the Guy Ritchie movies, like Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels (1998). I remember seeing that movie in the theater and being impressed with how the characters' stories all came together. It was entertaining at the time. Later, when watching the movie with my sister and a few others, it seemed to be violence just for the sake of violence, and perhaps I've outgrown that.
At any rate, Hollywood continues to pump out movies about assassins. Given that Tom Cruise's Collateral was well received, and that the Coen Brothers won Oscar gold for No Country for Old Men, I expect that trend to continue. At least until people quit going to see these movies.
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