From The Pit...
As my ten year high school reunion approaches, I am interested in the spate of reunion films that have recently graced our theater screens. In a couple of these films, the main characters go to their reunions an try to deny their lives and pretend they are something else. Maybe that’s what high school reunions are about though.
I haven’t decided whether or not I will attend my reunion. I have several ideas as to what I might pretend to be. I could pretend I am happy and that I enjoy people’s company. I could pretend I’m rich. I could go in drag. I could even pretend I am a hitman (this was my favorite idea for a while). I could probably pull off any of these charades.
John Cusack’s character Martin Q. Blank is a hitman who goes to his high school reunion in ‘Grosse Pointe Blank’. He tells a few people what he does but no one believes him until he has to kill a rival hitman with a fountain pen near his old locker. The interesting thing about this film is the dichotomy of the Blank character. He kills people for a living and feels no remorse. He sees a therapist who is terrified of him. What does bother him is that he stood up his prom date on prom night and left town to become a killer, first with the government and then as an entrepreneur just like Timothy Mcveigh.
Blank returns home to come to terms with his past and to do a job. He bumps into his old prom date, played by Minnie Driver. They agree to go to the reunion together and all goes well until Martin finds out there are hitmen in town to kill him and that his mark is his girlfriend’s father. It seems he’s some sort of witness in some case somebody doesn’t want him testifying in.
Dan Ackroyd plays a rival hitman, ‘the Grocer’, who is trying to get Blank to join a hitman’s union to cut down on job duplication. Blank says ‘no thanks’ and that he prefers to work alone. This doesn’t make the Grocer too happy. The Grocer and a couple of his boys come after Blank to try and eliminate some competition. There’s also another hitman after Blank for a job he botched in the past. So, the guy’s in town for his reunion, trying to reconcile with an old flame, he’s on a job, and he’s got four guys after him who want to whack him. Sounds like a busy vacation to me.
The film is not without its moments of violence. The script is well written but the story gets bogged down in the middle with romantic crap. The ending was also a bit too happy for my tastes. I can’t understand why a guy making so much money killing people would give it all up for some high school sweetheart he dumped ten years ago. If I got paid to kill people, I’d love my job.
Blank goes through this whole struggle with himself and a whole ‘killing is in my nature’ thing and ‘if I come to your door, you did something to bring me there’. The girl at first can’t deal with it all, but in the cutesy Hollywood ending everything is just great. Sure honey you kill people for a living, you shot up my house, killed somebody at the reunion and threw the body in the furnace, and you were supposed to kill my Dad. But hey I love you baby. Yeah right. Blank should save himself some grief and bump her off. I love you too baby, POP!!
The soundtrack to the film is quite nostalgic and cool. You’ve got the Clash, you’ve got the Beat, you’ve got the Violent Femmes. Cusack wanted to use the Femmes’ song ‘Blister in the Sun’ in the film, but strangely enough the original masters been lost. So the band re--recorded the track specifically for the film. The new version is a bit faster.
‘Grosse Pointe Blank’ isn’t a bad movie. I liked it. It’s not without it’s flaws or little cutesy moments though. It’s a great idea that could have been developed much further but wasn’t. Plus they stole my reunion idea. Perhaps the Hollywood crap rules of love, heroes and cuteness had an influence.
The main problem here now is what the hell am I going to pretend to be if I got to my high school reunion?
No comments:
Post a Comment