The Actor You Love to Hate

The last time I was on a business trip, you'll recall I "discovered" the incessant TV ads for The Amazing Snuggie! Since then, I've seen numerous other blog posts re: The Amazing Snuggie!, and I've even seen one of my friends on Facebook post a picture of her wearing one. Well, the version of The Amazing Snuggie she was wearing, she insisted it was called a Slanket, not a Snuggie. Whatever.

This time, the hotel I'm staying in has HBO, and they actually played a movie about which I was just interested enough to watch. The movie was the 2007 remake of The Heartbreak Kid, starring Ben & Jerry Stiller (sounds like they should be making ice cream), the precocious Malin Akerman, and the still very attractive ex-Tom Brady squeeze Michelle Monaghan. She was great opposite Robert Downey, Jr. in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005), which I briefly mentioned in my blog post on film noirs.

The Heartbreak Kid remake was a decent enough movie, if you consider that the Farrelly Brothers really were recycling two older Hollywood films, not one. The first, naturally, was the 1972 original "Neil Simon's" Heartbreak Kid*, starring Charles Grodin and Cybill Shepherd. The other film was one of their own, the very entertaining and quite good There's Something About Mary (1998). Mary still is one of my favorite of more recent comedies, and perhaps is the reason why I have a higher Ben Stiller Tolerance Factor** than most of my friends.

* Why don't movie directors, writers, or producers put their names in front of their movies any more these days? Neil Simon and Blake Edwards did it a lot, and who can forget the Albert R. Broccoli 007 films? Seems like a quaint old Hollywood tradition that went by the wayside several decades ago.

** On a somewhat related note, I always talk about reaching the FDA-approved Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) any time I watch a Sam Neill movie. When we went to see Jurassic Park (1993) on an IMAX screen, I must have overdosed several times over on my Sam Neill RDA!

Watching this remake of Heartbreak Kid, I was struck by how similar it was to Mary, and I do wonder whether the Farrelly Brothers are running out of ideas. I was happy to see the movie for free, essentially, in my hotel room*. It was a good movie, but it naturally contains all of those irritating Ben Stillerisms that annoy people so greatly. Like I said, you have to build up your Tolerance Level if you want to enjoy a Ben Stiller movie. It's like alcohol that way, only you really don't want to have to keep ingesting ever higher amounts of Ben Stiller movies in order to achieve the same buzz you once had watching a single episode of "The Ben Stiller Show."**

* Side note: Another movie that is good to catch for "free" -- Fool's Gold (2008) with Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson -- just finished playing on HBO tonight.

** Actually, did anyone ever think that show was funny? No, I didn't think so. I just couldn't think of a better analogy.

I won't get into some of the better parts of The Heartbreak Kid, since that's really not why I'm writing this post. [At this point, I always think of Albert Brooks telling Holly Hunter in Broadcast News (1987), "How do you like that? I buried the lead."]

No, the real reason why I wanted to write a post about watching the remake of what is probably an equally cringe-worthy 1972 Neil Simon movie is because the original starred Charles Grodin, The Actor You Love to Hate. See? I told you I buried the lead!

Grodin actually has some decent chops as a comedic thespian. The Grodin humor touchstones for me are two of his newer films, and I'm not talking about Beethoven (1992) or its sequel. He did a very funny buddy movie of a very different sort with Robert DeNiro in Midnight Run (1988). DeNiro was a bounty hunter charged with bringing Grodin's accountant character in, and as he tried to do so, hijinks ensued. That's about all the plot you really need to know on that one.

The other Grodin movie I love to watch any chance I get is Taking Care of Business (1990), which still ranks as the all-time funniest Jim Belushi movie. Sure, Belushi was in The Man With One Red Shoe (1985), but that was a Tom Hanks vehicle. K-9 (1989) was OK, and Mr. Destiny (1990) was the movie that came closest to matching Taking Care of Business, but for my money, I stop and watch Business any chance I get. Even if that means coming across the movie half-way through it, I'll watch the rest of it. I don't do that for other Belushi movies.

There is just something about Grodin's character in Business (and in Midnight Run, for that matter) that can drive a person crazy. He makes the viewer actively start to root against his character, and in both of those movies, bad things happen to Grodin. I sincerely think that's a large part of why I like those two movies. The longer Grodin snivels and whines his way through the performance, the more you want him to suffer. He's a perfect comedic foil for the good guys of DeNiro and Belushi.

I also love that Belushi plays such a die-hard Cubs fan that he sneaks out of his minimum-security prison to attend a Cubs World Series game (I know, it's a complete Hollywood fantasy), catches a home run (shown on the TV broadcast, but not noticed by the prison warden, played by Hector Elizondo), and then he sneaks back in to prison so he can be paroled the next day. You do have to suspend disbelief, but that's all part of the fun! Oh, and there is the very cute Loryn Locklin in a black bikini; how could I not post a pic of that?!

Of course, I am aware that the two actors that brought me to this post, Stiller and Grodin, share some of the same qualities in their acting methods. They both can be really freakin' annoying! They just might be the actors we all love to hate for a given generation. And yet, Stiller continues to get new acting gigs all the time.

I haven't seen Night at the Museum (2006) yet, but I continue to hear good things about Tropic Thunder (2008). That might have to be another Ben Stiller movie I put on my Netflix list.

It's a very good thing I've built up my Ben Stiller Tolerance Factor throughout the years.

Old Movies - Gotta Love 'Em!

Have I mentioned lately how much I adore Netflix? There is more to the story than just the fact that they have a great selection of hard-to-find movies (since they don't have to waste valuable shelf real estate in a commercial property, like a Blockbuster store would), more than the fact there are no late fees, and more than the fact that they now have a "watch it now" online feature that works through my Mac Mini* for truly on-demand viewing.

* I call the Mini the "electronic brain" of our home theater system. It's small, hooked up to the Internet wirelessly via WiFi, and it stores all of our iTunes music, videos, and digital pictures. We use the Sony HDTV as the monitor, and use a wireless keyboard and mouse to control it from the couch/man chair. The Mini's SuperDrive(TM) is our DVD player. Forgive me, but the Mini deserves an emoticon! :-)

No, for the real story behind why I love Netflix so much, I have to go back to 2002, when I was a newbie just starting my MBA program. I mistakenly took an elective course during the summer semester that really was intended for MBA students in their last or second-to-last semesters. The course was on entrepreneurialism, and was taught by an adjunct professor who was the President of Waterside Capital Corporation, a VC firm in Virginia Beach. To get a passing grade in the course, I had to estimate the break-even point in customers/subscribers for the Netflix DVD mailing service, which was in its infancy at the time. I had about two quarters of data to use to try to make any meaningful estimates, and I'm sure my calculations were completely off from reality. Luckily, the prof figured I did enough in the class to pass, and ever since then, I've had a warm fuzzy feeling for Netflix.

Let's go back to the first point I made above, that Netflix has an unparalleled library of old, hard-to-find movies. A little while ago, WSJ ran an obit for Donald Westlake, an author and screenwriter of some regard. Westlake penned detective novels with a certain humorous side to them, often under the pseudonym Richard Stark, and that was why he was lauded by the WSJ.

As they wrote the obit, the Journal did mention several of the movies that were made from the Richard Stark novels. Among them were Point Blank (1967) with Lee Marvin and The Hot Rock (1972) with Robert Redford. He also did the screenplay for The Grifters (1990), one of my less-favorite John Cusack films (although it was not without merit; if you've seen it, you'll know there's an unforgettable yet very brief scene with Annette Benning), and Payback (1999), the Mel Gibson movie I really wanted to like better than I did. Lucy Liu as dominatrix... Rowr!

I knew that I could find Point Blank and The Hot Rock on the list of available titles through Netflix, and that those titles would be impossible to find at a Blockbuster. Have I mentioned I adore Netflix? What I didn't know, couldn't possibly have known, when I put those two movies on my queue, was how remarkable they both are. Let's look at Point Blank first.

Now, I've seen enough old films to know and understand that Lee Marvin is one of the Top Ten all-time Hollywood tough guys. Scroll down in that list; you'll find him! But watching Marvin perform in Point Blank has to be one of his toughest of tough-guy roles!

At first, I have to admit I was worried that Point Blank would be another weird, creepy, go-nowhere mid- to late-sixties movie. When it started, it had a ton of flashbacks, which normally don't bother me. However, this movie had a similar look and feel for the first 15-20 minutes or so as did the immortally bad Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970), the movie that made Roger Ebert be a film critic rather than a writer/director. I was overjoyed that Point Blank got better and better the longer Marvin sought out the man who shot him and took his money.

One thing I noted was that Marvin never carried his gun in a normal manner. He never had a holster for it, never tucked it away in the small of his back, and practically never held it by the grip; rather, he carried it with his hand around the chamber of the gun. Who does that?! You can see what I'm talking about in the movie poster:

The other remarkable thing about Point Blank is just how many famous actors made an appearance. Archie Bunker is in it! John Vernon, who later was immortalized for all-time in the role of Dean Wormer in Animal House (1978), was in it. James Sikking, who is most famous for his work on "Hill Street Blues", played a sharpshooter. Even Kathleen Freeman, who played Sister Mary Stigmata (AKA, the Penguin) in The Blues Brothers (1980), is in it. What a hoot!

So, if you ever want to know just why Lee Marvin was voted as the Number 1 Hollywood Tough Guy of all time, check out Point Blank!

The other Westlake film, The Hot Rock, was also interesting, but for different reasons. I have to say that I like Redford as an actor, but not at the same level of intensity as my regard for Paul Newman. Just the fact that Newman is in a movie is enough to make me like it! That's true even if he makes a small appearance in otherwise clunkers of movies like Message In a Bottle (1999) or Nobody's Fool (1994); Melanie Griffith - UGH! Newman had the special charisma where everything he touched was better simply because he was involved. And those blue eyes!

Ah, but I digress. What I meant to say above is that I haven't seen that many Redford movies that don't have Newman in them. The Hot Rock is one, and we also recently watched The Horse Whisperer (1998). I did mention earlier that Westlake was known for his comedic stylings when it came to crime dramas. The Hot Rock, as it turns out, is meant to be a comedy on par with more famous movies of the era, like The Pink Panther (1963) or, more accurately, The Return of The Pink Panther (1975).

The Hot Rock also has several actors who later went on to star in other vehicles. The movie poster might be hard to make out, but standing on Redford's left is George Segal, who I always associate with the role of Jack Gallo in the TV series "Just Shoot Me!" Ron Liebman, the guy to Redford's right on the poster, has done a ton of work in Hollywood. And the most famous cameo of all was performed by Zero Mostel of The Producers (1968 Mel Brooks original) fame. The actor who caught my eye, though, and who forced me to stop the movie and rewind to make sure it really was him, was Christopher Guest! He played a cop in the precinct house on which our foursome of jewel thieves land a helicopter (What? Did they think the cops wouldn't notice a helicopter landing on the roof?!), and he only had two lines or so, but it marked his first credited performance in a major motion film. How about that?

Something else about The Hot Rock also sent shivers down my spine as we watched it. The film was released in 1972, so they probably filmed it in 1970 or so. As they filmed the helicopter scene (on the way to the precinct house on the west side of Manhattan), they flew right past the World Trade Center (WTC) twin towers in lower Manhattan. The creepy thing is that the towers weren't finished yet! One tower still had construction going on at the top 5-10 stories or so, and the other tower had about a third of the tower yet to go. Just knowing that those two buildings no longer exist, and all the death and destruction that went with them, really freaked me out while watching The Hot Rock.

I did mention that The Hot Rock was meant to be a funny crime caper, and the only thing I'll say about that is our definition of what's funny sure has changed since the late '60s and early '70s. I'm guessing my dad would find it funny, but then again, he always thought "Three's Company" was hysterical (sorry to throw you under the bus like that, Dad). This movie, while funny at times, doesn't have the same zing as Peter Sellers achieved in the old Blake Edwards Pink Panther movies.

If you get the chance, and if you have a subscription with Netflix, definitely check out those two movies. They're worth the time!

A Quick Review of Film Noir

I've been chewing on this in my mind* for a little while, ever since renting and watching the movie Brick (2005) in mid-November. Brick was the debut film from Rian Johnson, or at least was the first full-length feature movie he finished after completing a short called Evil Demon Golfball from Hell!!! (1996) in film school. You can see that it took Rian the better part of a decade to find a producer or distribution company to support his debut film, which speaks more to the glut of new movies produced annually by Hollywood than it does to his talent.

* Initially, I thought I would create a top five list of my favorite film noir movies. Then, I thought stopping at just five would be silly; why not fill out a full top ten list? Then, I worried that any top ten list would by necessity unfairly exclude some great noirs out there. Plus, I have to admit I haven't seen that many of the classic film noirs, so any list I pulled together would be incomplete. So I scrapped that idea.

Brick, simply put, is nothing short of brilliant! As I watched it for the first time, I could tell instantly that it was a debut film. There's something about watching a really good movie that often marks it as a director's first movie. I can't even artfully describe those indicators; perhaps it is the movie's outstanding dialog; perhaps it is the cinematography that borrows shots from classic movies and great directors; perhaps it is simply a gut feel that says the director poured his or her heart and soul into the film. A parallel exists in the world of novels: the debut novel from an author often surpasses any subsequent work, no matter how excellent the following books may be.

Ah, so what makes the movie Brick so excellent? Here is where I wanted to compare it to other film noirs I love. Brick contains all the essential ingredients for a film noir: in the cast of characters, it has the intrepid detective (our hero!), the informant, the cops/authority figure, the femme fatale, the equally brainy antagonist, and the antagonist's muscle; it has the snappy, quick-witted dialog derived from the works of Dashiell Hammett*; it has the requisite dark settings and interesting interplay between light and shadows; and it has the twisting, turning plot that includes a mystery our hero must unravel. It does have the intrepid detective getting beat up by the muscle, a characteristic of most but not all film noirs. It does have the long reveal at the end of the movie, where our hero exposes the true criminal mastermind behind the plot.

* By the way, I know that many people give Wikipedia a hard time, and no encyclopedia should be used as the only reference for source material. No less a reknowned blogger than Curt Schilling advocates all bloggers refrain from using Wikipedia links in posts. To which I say, find other quick-to-grab reference material on the Web that is any more trustworthy than Wikipedia, and I'll use it.

As I thought more about Brick and other film noirs, I knew that I've been a fan of film noir for a very long time. Brick is similar to another noir that was the debut feature from my favorite film makers, Joel and Ethan Coen, the Coen Brothers: Blood Simple (1984). Like Blood Simple, Brick can be rapid-paced at times, while also being maddeningly slow-paced at other times. I was always very impressed with how the Coen Brothers allowed the storyline to develop in Blood Simple, and how the characters in the story never knew fully quite what was going on, not completely.

That characteristic set up the final line of Blood Simple by M. Emmet Walsh (who played a PI, yet wasn't the intrepid detective of the story), and also played a huge role in another film noir by the Coens, Miller's Crossing (1990). Brick probably borrows more from Miller's Crossing than Johnson would like to admit. Much of the dialog is very similar ("dangle," for please excuse us), the interplay of suspicion and distrust between the antagonist and the muscle is the same, and the intrepid detective gets a little lucky when facing his accusers and imminent death. If anything, the hero in Brick solves the riddle quicker than does Gabriel Byrne's Tom Reagan character in Miller's Crossing; Reagan ends the movie by being better lucky than good.

Brick even borrows heavily from Blade Runner (1982) which, although it is a sci fi movie first and foremost, is also a film noir in the best definition. I remember the very first time I saw Blade Runner, and how impressed I was that the hero got the snot kicked out of him in every single fight*, no matter the opponent. Joseph Gordon-Levitt's (the teen kid from "3rd Rock from the Sun", who looks surprisingly like a young Heath Ledger in this movie) Brendan also gets beat up by the muscle in most scenes, even though he has an early victory against the stud football player, Brad Bramish. I can't prove it, but I also swear that Johnson used the same music in Brick for a scene between Brendan and Laura, the femme fatale, as Ridley Scott used during a scene in Deckard's apartment with his femme fatale played by Sean Young. It's a lilting little jazz number, and it sounds like the same song in both movies.

* That might seem funny, but think about it: how often did John Wayne get physically beat up in his movies? How often did Clint Eastwood? Sylvester Stallone? OK, bad example; Rocky (1976) was all about getting beat up. But given that most Hollywood heros can fight off hordes of goons without a scratch, and that the Stormtroopers in Star Wars (1977) couldn't hit the broad side of a barn, the simple fact that Deckard in Blade Runner had his butt handed to him by the replicants was significant, even if replicants had super-human strength.

Johnson also borrowed heavily from the classic film noirs, and specifically mentioned Hammett in his discussion of deleted scenes on the DVD. He wanted his dialog to be witty and snappy, like the works of Hammett, who gave us Sam Spade and Nick and Nora, the heroes of the Thin Man franchise. What's funny is that I recently read The Thin Man the novel, after which we watched The Thin Man (1934) the movie, all because of the movie that started the successful rebirth of Robert Downey Jr. as an actor. No, not Iron Man (2008). While that was a great movie, and while Downey Jr. was an inspired choice for Tony Stark, the movie that resurrected his career was Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005). What a great film that was! The actors specifically referenced the great pulp fiction novels that served as the basis of film noir without actually giving credit to Hammett, but the reference was clear.

In terms of the classics, Johnson borrowed heavily from Orson Welles' seminal movies, using low shots looking upward at the actors for dramatic effect (borrowed from Citizen Kane [1941]) and the general look and feel of Touch of Evil (1958).

Given that Johnson borrowed heavily from other film noirs for Brick, what makes Brick stand out on its own? Why did it win eight awards from such notable film festivals as Sundance and the Independent Spirit Awards? The answer is that Johnson set all of these classic film noir staples mentioned above in a high school setting! The premise is brilliant, and it's hard to believe no one thought of it before. All of the main characters save for the cop/authority figure Assistant Vice Principal (played by none other than Richard Roundtree, the original Shaft!) are high schoolers, although they certainly aren't shown attending classes. Notes are passed between lockers. Who eats lunch with whom and where plays a significant role in the plot. All the usual teenage drama and histrionics that go along with high school heighten the danger and suspense of the plot line. Brendan has to navigate the treacherous waters of band geeks, drama queens, dopers, jocks, and brains, all while being an outsider and loner. It's brilliant!

As a coworker of mine told me after I let him borrow the DVD, he and his wife were smiling all the way through the movie. It's a very simple concept, setting a film noir in high school, but executed to perfection with this movie. What's old is new again. There are sequences of dialog between characters that could only happen with high schoolers.

Oh, and for all the drama and intrigue that goes along with film noir, there is also room for levity. I laughed my butt off when the high schoolers faced off over the kitchen table while the quite clueless suburban mom served up country-style orange juice in the same country-style juice glasses my grandmother had at her farm! Simply brilliant.

Given that the box office numbers listed on IMDB are quite low for Brick, it is clear that not many people have seen this movie. I "discovered" it when I rented The Constant Gardener (2005), another film from Focus Features that had the trailer for Brick on the disc. Ever since we saw Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson in Lost in Translation (2003) from Focus Features, they have been one of my favorite movie distributors. Up soon on my Netflix list will be another Bill Murray film by Focus, Broken Flowers (2005). Here's hoping it is as good as the rest.

If you get the chance to rent or watch Brick, take it. It is well worth the time.

Hollywood's Fascination with Assassins

I watched the movie Smokin' Aces (2006) the other night, and it got me started thinking about all the assassin movies that Hollywood has released recently. It's not just Hollywood, either. The European and Asian filmmakers have a long history of making films about hit men, so let's not forget about that. It could be that part of this uptick in assassin movies has something to do with American popular culture being influenced more and more by Japanese and Chinese culture.

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)
  

I would even lump the first Terminator (1984) movie into this list, because yes, Arnold's time-traveling cyborg was sent back to assassinate Sarah Connor. Again, this is a very incomplete list, but there are some important points to keep in mind about these movies.

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.