Hitman High: notes on Grosse Pointe Blank (1997)

Note: I wrote this time capsule of a review back in 1997.

Grosse Pointe Blank has the kind of high concept plot that would doom most movies: a hitman returns to his high school reunion to rediscover the love of his life while still fighting other hitmen who trail him.  Fortunately for us, the film stars John Cusack, a young actor with enough clout to star in not one, but two Woody Allen films, and enough intelligence to shape a film to suit his abilities.  Cusack made a strong impression in Say Anything as a ditzy kickboxer who wins over the smartest girl in his class.  Since then, he has resisted any typecasting as the charming young swain, preferring offbeat roles like the conman he plays in The Grifters or the innocent playwright in Bullets Over Broadway.  

In Grosse Pointe Blank, we see Cusack counteract his charm with his job.  The film balances Cusack's emotional sterility against his budding warmth brought out by meeting his old high school friends.  In many ways, this is a quintessentially cold movie designed for disaffected  twenty-somethings living under the shadow of the baby-boomer generation.  The screenplay writers make frequent references to 90s-style exploitation (Cusack finds that his home has been converted into a convenience store) and contrast that with Cusack's mixed morality split between the undeniable glamour of killing people for money and the job's obvious evils.  

The charm of the film lies in its verbal wit and the glint in Cusack's eyes sometimes hidden behind dark glasses that make him look exactly like Elvis Costello.  Minnie Driver plays Cusack's old girlfriend that he left in the lurch on prom night ten years ago.  She has married and divorced since then, leaving her conveniently single for Cusack's return.  Once they rediscover each other, Minnie never really puts up much of a battle over his job; indeed she accepts him pretty quickly after seeing him murder another hitman by stabbing him in the neck with a pen (after all, he is rich).  Much of the tension of the movie is played out in more subtle ways, as old high school friends confront him with marriage, babies, clerking in convenience stores, car dealerships, and real estate.  Even Dan Akroyd want him to join a hitman union.

Cusack must choose between the freedom of isolation, and the responsibilities of commitment.  In a strange way, Cusack's job fits in perfectly with the vicious 90s-style economics confronting young men and women in a suburb of Detroit.  When he tells Minnie's rich dad that he kills for money, her dad replies "Good, there's a growth industry."

In the end, Cusack goes for the girl, and he does this in the midst of a shoot out, a perfect example of romantic detachment under fire.  The violence is gracefully choreographed, as if Cusack knows he needs it in the film to help the studio market it, but he's impatient with such visual meat and potatoes.  He even includes a huge explosion for those in the audience who find they need one.

One senses Cusack is getting too knowing to star in movies at all, hence the wry, neatly ironic vehicle he chooses here.  One part urban western, another part sly suburban satire, Grosse Pointe Blank delivers its barbs with cool precision.