BEFORE: Well, at least I tried to program something appropriate for Memorial Day. Now that I read the plot description, I might have miscalculated, but the chain is the chain. Here I set up this great progression from cops to robbers to safe-crackers, to secret agents to mercenaries to superheroes and then FBI agents. Geez, now that I look back at the last 3 weeks of movies, maybe the transitions weren't as smooth as I thought they'd be. I kind of lumped all these different action heroes (and villains) together - oh, well. Linking from Val Kilmer to George Clooney (last seen in "Out of Sight") should be easy - since they played Batman in successive films, I can easily justify linking through Chris O'Donnell or Michael Gough, who were common to both "Batman & Robin" and "Batman Forever".
THE PLOT: An assassin hides out in Italy for one last assignment.
AFTER: OK, so I tanked with my Memorial Day pick. This film has nothing to do with soldiers or the military in any way. I could have gone straight to war films, but I'm saving those for the week of July 4.
So, what does happen in this film? Clooney plays a hitman (great, I love it, greenlight that sumbitch) and that's really all you need to know. That, and the fact that other hitmen, from a certain Scandinavian country, are trying to kill him. That being said, there's a lot of inaction between the action sequences - you can call that "tension", or you can prefer to think of it as long periods of nothing. Your choice.
The film seems more notable for what doesn't happen, which may be a neat trick. I'm going to paraphrase wildly here, because I'm not in the habit of giving away plot points (I'm sure I occasionally do, but not intentionally). We've seen it happen many times in movies - a professional (thief, killer, forger, etc.) gets hired to do a less-than-legal job, and before/after/in addition to getting paid, he gets taken out. Really, he's nothing more than a loose end at that point, someone who knows too much about the crime (theft, murder, forgery, etc.) Of course, if he reported the crime he'd be reporting his own part in the crime, but some crime bosses just need to be thorough.
Two questions - does this accurately reflect actions in the real-life crime world? Not that I know, most of what I know about crime comes from movies. And, if this is so commonplace, why doesn't anyone ever see it coming. OK, third question - can said criminal undertakings survive without their best thief, or assassin, or forger?
So this film becomes a character study of a shady individual, who realizes he's like a chess piece that can be removed from the board at any time. Is the next job from his employer a legitimate one, or is it a set-up to take him out? Remember, it's not paranoia if someone really is out to get you. Why did everyone suddenly leave the café, all at the same time? Do they all know something's about to happen? Who's that guy in the blue shirt, and why does he keep turning up? We see the main character being careful and suspicious, so we end up feeling it too.
The life of the hitman is complicated further by his instructions to lie low between assignments, and to not make any friends. Our anti-hero can't quite seem to do that, however, and the movie is stronger for it. After all, how exciting would the movie be if he just found an Italian villa and stayed there, staring at the walls? He seeks out company, and this all adds to the movie's tension as well - is this person really who they say they are? Or were they sent there to keep an eye on him? I've been trying not to read professional reviews during this process, but something from Roger Ebert's review, which got quoted on the IMDB page, pointed out something that I didn't catch that puts a whole different spin on this film. It's possible that the film has a lot of depth to it that may be revealed by multiple viewings.
RATING: 4 out of 10 Vespas
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