Focusing super hard not to be destroyed mentally by all the bad news and sexual harassment accusations coming from Hollywood nowadays, I decided to review an old favorite of mine. Hope you will enjoy the entry!
Martin is an assassin for hire, he is quite talented and does OK in his job, but he is given an impossible decision: go home for his high school reunion or not? The little town he left behind, and the love of his life
Debi, are still there, unaffected by time or anything out in the world, while he has changed quite a lot. While at home he realizes that he does not want to be in the business anymore, but quitting is not as easy as it sounds...
Now, this is of course dark humor, but I think it is one of the best examples.
Martin is troubled much more by the ghost of his former self than he is by killing. His biggest regret is leaving the love of his life behind and when life gives him a second chance with her, he makes sure to take it. The two best characters in the movie are his assistant
Marcella (played by his sister
Joan Cusack, and let me add here that I simply adore that they are always in each others' films!) and his psychiatrist
Dr. Oatman. The former always helps him keep his humanity, not to get dragged down into the dark world that surrounds them. So much so that she is the one who pushes him to go home for the reunion. The latter on the other hand has to listen to his terrible stories and the work he does and he tries to help him but he always falls short. However, you gotta admire the doctor's tenacity in trying to help someone who is somewhat beyond redemption...
Well, I also need to mention that whilst this movie tries to be a romantic comedy, it has some awesome action scenes. In it the main character has to kill someone sent after him and he does that during the reunion, in the end having to fight off his former boss in his ex-girlfriend's house. A lot of blood is involved in this process and he ends up telling the girl about his insecurities and why he left her, as they are trying to run for their lives.
The set up of the movie is quite unique, in my opinion, as instead of a boring romantic comedy it added a very unusual setting for it and it simply works. You care about them, you laugh at them, you understand the struggle and it completely puts a high school reunion into a different perspective!
Watch it? Most definitely. In my humble opinion this is
John Cusack at his best! I adore this movie and try to rewatch it as often as I can. It has a marvelous cast with very good jokes and entertaining action scenes.
Until the next item on my list!
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