Culture Blues

The Hitman-in-Crisis

George Clooney's The American comes out this week, the latest offering from the cinematic sub-genre of "hitman-in-crisis," a term which we just made up right this second, but are expecting to see all over the internet soon. These aren't just movies featuring an assassin (sorry, Assassins), these are movies featuring contract killers with SERIOUS EMOTIONAL PROBLEMS. In order to prepare for Clooney's turn as a hitman-in-crisis, you might want to check out this handy guide that Jeremiah and Jeff have prepared on the genre's canonical characters.

You can tell you’ve got a hitman-in-crisis when he’s the subject of a Youtube tribute video set to the music of Kate Bush. I’d argue that Leon, the title character of Luc Besson’s seminal action movie, is the first ever hitman-in-crisis. Leon’s a far cry from existential disaster at the movie’s start; he’s just living a quiet life, tending his plant, drinking his milk, occasionally assassinating a mob boss and his entire crew with ruthless efficiency. But then 12-year-old Natalie Portman comes flouncing along and forces Leon to confront all those messy human feelings he’s kept squashed for so long. Suddenly Leon is playing the part of mentor, father figure, and (somewhat) reluctant love interest to a precocious kid way too smart for her own good. This goes way beyond Leon simply learning to feel again – Besson probes that icky grey area between paternal relationship and, well, some weird-ass Humbert Humbert stuff, creating a hitman-in-crisis whose complexity has never been duplicated.

Unlike Leon, Martin Blank is already firmly entrenched in his emotional breakdown by the time we meet him. Blank is basically a grown up version of Cusack's over-articulate, highly emotional 80s teen, but with "a certain moral flexibility" that makes him perfect for stabbing people in the jugular with pens and accidentally blowing up the occasional dog. This is probably what became of Lloyd Dobler after Say Anything. We come to understand that as a youth Blank might have been a bit of a nihilist (weren't we all nihilists back in high school?), but has suddenly realized that his life might have meaning. Blank has his shakabuku (the swift spiritual kick to the head that alters his reality forever) at his high school reunion, where's he forced to confront Grosse Pointe, the conformist paradise that first drove him to murder for hire. Like a fair percentage of hitmen-in-crisis, it just takes a little love from the normal humans for Blank to have a breakthrough. He's still going to need a lot of therapy, but at least he gets the girl, and doesn't have to blow himself up to redeem himself.

Dim bulb Melvin Smiley is unburdened by many of the larger questions that plague fellow hitmen-in-crisis. All he wants is to juggle his two high maintenance girlfriends, earn enough to keep them happy and fit in with his coworkers. He has an extraordinary aptitude for murder and he seems to enjoy it (why else would he break dance while shooting people?). The only problem is that his more nefarious associates see Mark Wahlberg’s guileless Melvin as a perfect fall guy. By the end of The Big Hit, he's outlasted everybody, but he's only grown half a spine, and remains an all too appealing target in the world of murder for hire. He's the only hitman-in-crisis whose problems stem from the fact that he thinks too little.

Jan Decleir’s Angelo is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, which makes his job as a hitman considerably more difficult, and his refusal to kill a 12-year-old girl who was pimped out by her father has made him the target of his former employer (why is it that the people who hire contract killers are always so unyielding?). Angelo’s reawakened conscience sends him on a crusade to murder those who used the child prostitute's services, including some government officials. High-profile pedophile killing sprees are great but even total scumbags respect Hitman Rule #1 – kids are off limits. Maybe if it didn't take a job as heinous as killing a child for him to rediscover his soul, Angelo would be remembered as more than the guy who forgot how to kill people right.

At first glance, Vincent might seem like just a badass heavy; a salt-and-pepper murder tornado that briefly touches down in Jamie Foxx's sadsack cabdriver Max’s life to wreak havoc for a night. However, Vincent isn't an unemotional force-of-nature; he's a hitman-in-crisis that exudes the same loneliness we see in many of the others on this list. Look at how quickly he takes to his Stockholm Syndrome friendship with Max. He just wants to be liked! It’s weird to listen to Vincent lament the “disconnected” lives of the people of Los Angeles as he simultaneously checks names off his deathlist. As if this is a guy that’s forged a lot of meaningful connections with people. Unlike many of our other hitmen, Vincent never lets ennui overtake his professionalism. He’s a murderer to the end. He never seeks redemption and so, while we might briefly sympathize with lonely Vincent, we know he gets what he deserves dying in solitude in a subway car.

Perhaps no other hitman’s internal struggle with their moral character has manifested itself in such physical ways. Panic attacks have rendered burnt out Julian Noble incapable of the simple task of blowing people away with a sniper rifle. Pierce Brosnan’s Julian attempts to maintain his smooth operator persona but is quickly revealed as needy, clingy and really teetering on the edge of a full-blown mental breakdown as he threatens to suck the cool right out of killing people for money. In an unprecedented move, it’s a friendship with a fellow heterosexual male that gives Julian the confidence to kill one last time, but without anywhere to go or anything to do, it seems unlikely he’ll be able to leave that life behind forever, even with his biology fighting against it.

Typically a hitman-in-crisis is forced to deal with the fact that at the end of the day, rationalizations aside, he’s just a murderer. He snuffs out lives. He’s seeing the bullet-ridden ghosts of all those people he’s sent to premature graves. As a hard drinking hitmanYou Kill Me, Frank relocates to San Francisco, starts attending AA meetings, falls in love and goes right on killing people without a single thought as to whether that's wrong. No other stationed in Buffalo, New York, I should love Ben Kingsley’s Frank Falenczyk. He's hit rock bottom and drunken contract killing hijinks should have ensued. Unfortunately, throughout the course of hitman-in-crisis has such little compunction about killing. Instead, Frank’s concern is that his drinking problem is getting in the way of his murders. It’s an interesting twist, that the crisis is independent of the work as a hitman, but it produces a rather undesirable effect; You Kill Me makes the odd argument that it’s better to be a killer than a drunk.

While most of our hitmen-in-crisis are busy working through feelings of loneliness and isolation, their numerous murders become a mere afterthought. Such is not the case for Ray who is suffering suicidal guilt after accidently killing a child. But at least he’s not alone! His partner-in-crime Ken is around to keep him company and also, maybe, execute him. With In Bruges we get an unprecedented double crisis: Ray trying to decide if he deserves to live, and Ken trying to decide if Ray to deserves to die. All this is set against Bruges, a more than metaphorical purgatory, with denizens cut straight from Hieronymus Bosch. In the end, Ken makes a typical hitman-in-crisis sacrifice, but Ray’s fate is not so cut and dry. He decides that he wants to live, after being gut shot, but is that and his impending imprisonment penance enough for this hitman-in-crisis? His beautiful love interest (of course) would probably say so and, typically, all it takes is a woman to redeem our wounded hitman.

Did we miss your favorite hitman-in-crisis? Tell us in the comments!

Tagged as: collateral, emo assassin, grosse pointe blank, hitman in crisis, in bruges, leon the professional, memory of a killer, the american, the big hit, the matador, you kill me