SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

GazerRise Fantastic!

Tymon Sutton The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

macca-missbookworm If you are at all into interested in the following sections of assassination films, with a dark humor meshed with it, classic 90s films and John Cusack you will love this movie. I was intrigued just from the trailer. I watched it and you can see why John is such a successful and great actor, he puts all his effort into films and it just makes them better. I loved the humor of this film, its quite dark, so not to everyone's taste, but I laughed my head off.

Geoff Wingard I have a soft spot for this movie. Cusack has played several variations of Blanke (the lead character) over the years and this itself is pretty interesting; he has been able to explore a sort of lost soul/Rennaisance killer in a variety of settings at various ages. This film works on a lot of levels. It speaks to a certain sense of nostalgia and regret for lost opportunity. It's a hilarious romp through alt-80s pop-culture. And it's a great study in the internal conflicts of a man confronting his fears and the consequences of his decisions. It's also funny and pretty decent adventure movie.Watch the movie twice (or more) to capture the details, setting and back story. The characters are surprisingly well-developed, but a lot of this is hidden by rapid-fire dialogue, in scenery details and in the score. Music is HUGE part of this movie. Sadly, the official soundtrack only includes about half of the songs used in the film. The score sets the scene, explains the characters and the cast and director were clearly aware of the impact of the lyrics of the songs as well as their tone to define the action.Watch this movie.

MisterWhiplash I miss movies like Grosse Pointe Blank. I don't think that this could get made today by a major studio. Or maybe it could be, but I wonder if it would need even more star power than what's here (John Cusack and Dan Aykroyd were names, but Minnie Driver wasn't, and this and Good Will Hunting were her breakthrough roles), and if it would be a lower-budgeted film or independently released. This is the sort of project that could be easily pitched in the 90's - a hit-man with some existential issues and at a crossroads in his late 20's, goes to do a job in his hometown at the same time that he goes to his high school reunion and meets up with his girlfriend he left behind - and it would be eaten up and ready to go. I miss those days, and in a way seeing it today brings on that nostalgia with its soundtrack pumped full of 90's and 80's songs (since it's the Class of 1986 it has very much a 80's soundtrack).It's also just a consistently entertaining movie, with Cusack giving us a character who can nonchalantly tell people when he gets back home he's a professional killer and, by the way he says it and his tone, no one takes him seriously (the way he brings it up in conversation, the 'what do you do now' thing, who would?) There's also great supporting work from Aykroyd, who gets into it in a few scenes with Cusack as if it's a screwball comedy, with that very quick pace and the wording very specific and stylized (and Aykroyd, surprisingly for me, is believable as hell as a psychotic hit-man), and also Alan Arkin as Cusack's therapist. It's an interesting thing to see his part in the story since it isn't exactly realistic - any therapist would've called the cops on Mr. Blank as soon as they hear about him using a fork on the president of Paraguay - but because he sticks around he's a guy who listens barely and when Cusack calls him up he doesn't pick up the answering machine. Smart, clever character bits are abundant here.And Minnie Driver makes for a great romantic interest, especially when she first meets up with Blank again; he comes by the radio station where she works and she puts him on mic for people to call in and ask him questions. They have just solid chemistry, and it especially helps when things turn a little darker (but not too much) in the third act of the story. There's ingenious little things throughout the movie, like the use of a Guns N Roses cover of "Live & Let Die" from original version into Muzak cover in a convenience store, but always the movie is grounded in some level of reality. It reminded me in a way of what was wrong with a movie like American Ultra from 2015, where it's also got hyper-kinetic action but the characters outside of it don't get quite enough build up amid the surprises. Here, I always believed Blank as a real guy, even when he has to get out his gun for a shoot-out or hand-to-hand combat.Is it the best ever? No, but you can sit back and watch it maybe on cable (or if you got it old school VHS) and the effect is surprisingly fun.

jimbo-53-186511 Martin Blank (John Cusack) is a professional assassin who is sent on a mission to Detroit which by sheer coincidence is the same city that his 10 year school reunion is taking place. Complications ensue for Blank when his rival Grocer (Dan Aykroyd) discovers that he's pursuing the same target as Blank. Blank also ends up side-tracked when he becomes more interested in rekindling his romance with Debi Newberry (Minnie Driver) who is the girl that he stood up 10 years ago.I'll be blunt and admit that this film bored me to tears. I don't understand how it's garnered its current IMDb rating of 7.4. The film has a good concept and I liked the idea of 2 rival assassins being at loggerheads and the idea of them pursuing one other certainly makes for a funny idea on paper. The problem is that the film doesn't play out this way and for the most part it was a dull and tedious film revolving around Blank and Newberry attempting to turn the clock back and rekindle their romance that never was. The problem is that their characters are quite poorly developed and not particularly interesting and the same could be said for their romance. I honestly couldn't have cared less whether they got together or not. Had this aspect acted as a sub plot rather than the main plot then I probably wouldn't have been as annoyed, but this aspect of the film is too weak and uninteresting to drive the majority of the narrative.Other problems with the film are that it quite simply isn't very funny. It's billed as a 'Black Comedy' so I didn't expect a laugh riot, but I did expect for there to be a moderately humorous tone running throughout. Alan Arkin was great as Blank's therapist and I wish that he'd been given more screen time. Sadly, the limited screen time he was given wasn't enough to save this shambles. No-one else really stood out for me.The film shifts up a gear in the final 15 minutes and I must admit the finale was quite fun, but again it wasn't enough to even raise the film to 'average' as a whole.I think the problem for me with this film was expectations; I expected this to be a fun, dark edged rivalry between 2 assassins, but what I got for the most part was a dull, tedious largely unfunny rekindling of a romance which I neither wanted nor cared about. I was tempted to give this film a 1 out of 10 as it was shockingly bad, but I raised my score to a 3 out of 10 as I felt that it deserved a little bit of credit for the couple of laughs that it got from me.