BEFORE: More Bruce Willis tonight, and I'm back to hitmen/contract killers. I know it seems like I'm switching back and forth, but for my purposes (and to maintain the best linkage) I'm treating hired killers the same as serial killers - and this will lead me into spies, which are, cinematically speaking, sort of just like hired killers who work for the government.
THE PLOT: Nick is a struggling dentist in Canada. A new neighbor moves in, and he discovers that it is Jimmy "The Tulip" Teduski. His wife convinces him to go to Chicago and inform the mob boss who wants Jimmy dead.
AFTER: I'm glad to have a bit of comedy around here, this project has been going down some pretty dark roads in the past few weeks. Even black comedy is welcome - and I mean "black" as in gallows humor, not African-American - but in the end it all comes down to tone. It's really hard to nail the appropriate level of comedy when people are getting shot at here and there.
Here Bruce Willis plays it cool, which gives us an interesting look inside the mind of a hit-man. His morals may be questionable, but he doesn't seem to have much self-doubt. He kills people for money, but does not consider himself a bad man - if anything, he considers his clients to be bad people, because they're the ones who want their husbands or wives dead. Somehow he sees himself as the instrument of their sins, yet retains his own personal moral self-image. Maybe "honorable" is a better word than "moral".
But then there's this dichotomy, because he also wants his own wife dead - yet he doesn't believe in divorce, which would be immoral. But killing her is somehow OK - it's a little more complicated than that, because of the contrivances of the film that involve a large sum of money, but that's the gist of it.
The whole situation is seen through the eyes of a mild-mannered dentist, the "everyman" of the piece who himself is in a loveless marriage - and finding out that a hitman has moved in next door is first presented as a problem, then some kind of opportunity. But then it's a problem again, and then a complicated solution of sorts. So there are more than a few turn-arounds, or double- and triple-crosses, which are at the heart of any good crime film.
What's weird is that nobody at any point chooses to go to the police, or contact the authorities in any way. That's probably the first thing I'd do if I thought someone was trying to have me killed. But the cops are really an after-thought here, maybe it's because they're Canadian and therefore sort of ineffectual. Instead, people are rewarded for either out-thinking or out-shooting everyone else.
I had an opportunity to send a script for an animated feature to Matthew Perry a few years ago, which he ended up turning down. But he asked us to send it to him under an assumed name, which was "Alvy Singer" - that's the character Woody Allen played in "Annie Hall". So when I watched him in this film, I was thinking about that, and that turned out to be the key to Perry's character here. I think that's how he sees himself, as a Woody-like nebbish character, caught up in situations outside his control, involving people who are more powerful and dangerous (think of that weird car ride with Christopher Walken in "Annie Hall").
So, Dirty Harry taught us that ketchup doesn't belong on a hot dog, and this film instructs us that mayonnaise does not belong on a hamburger. Must be a Canadian thing - but Russian dressing on a burger is OK, and that's part mayo, right? These rules are almost as inconsistent as the hitman's morals.
Also starring Matthew Perry (last seen in "Almost Heroes"), Michael Clarke Duncan (last seen in "Green Lantern"), Amanda Peet (last seen in "Changing Lanes"), Rosanna Arquette, Natasha Henstridge, Harland Williams.
RATING: 5 out of 10 dental records
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