Unless, due to some sort of Mandela effect, my memory is as off centre as a defective rifle scope, the latter part of the 1990s were thick with quirky crime movies that, for the most part, no one can remember.
I mean, there’s Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels of course and I’ve always had a soft spot for Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead, but aside from that, the rush to find the next Tarantino-esque crime romp mostly a forgettable affair full of clumsy thugs, flamboyant hitmen and farcical happenstances that usual led to incredulous wisecracking. However, guilty of all these tropes and yet remaining steadfastly superior to the bulk of its competitors was Grosse Pointe Blank, an aggressively chipper comedy/thriller that takes a bullet made of pure 90s cool and shoots it clean through the brain of a John Hughes movie about reluctant adulting.
Martin Q. Blank is your quintessential, 90s, movie, hitman. He dresses all in black and he’s extraordinarily good at his job; however, of late he’s noticed that he’s lost a step or two due to some bouts of incredibly bad luck such as notching a couple of hits or accidently vaporising the prize pooch of a wealthy owner on one of his missions of monetized murder. His therapist isn’t much help, mostly because he knows what Martin’s job is and he’s utterly intimidated and Blank’s stress level are rapidly increasing thanks to the increasingly violent methods his rival, Grocer, to get him to join a Hitman’s union that he’s trying to put together.
However, Martin’s eager assistant, Marcella, has hit upon a possible cure for his malaise as he has just received an invitation to his ten year high school reunion back in his home town of Grosse Pointe. This proves to be doubly fortuitous as, due to one of his mess up hits, Martin also has to pay amends to his employers by taking a free job in Detroit, which is only a stone’s throw away.
The true issue proves to be that Martin’s ditching of his home town was incredibly abrupt – like, ditching Debi, his high school sweetheart, on prom night, abrupt – and his return is rife with surprises with most of them being bad. But after discovery that his childhood home has been replaced by a convenience store, his father long dead and his mother in a home with no clue as to what’s going on around her, Blank starts to slowly reconnect with a smattering of old friends such as old buddy Paul and even reignites a reluctant spark with Debi, even if she’s unsure of whether to persue.
However, awkward reunions aren’t the only uncomfortable thing that Blank has to endure as some NSA agents and bunch of professional killers, including Grocer, have descended on Grosse Pointe to get Blank in their sights.
The first thing you notice about Grosse Pointe Blank – apart of the sharp suits and the even sharper dialogue – is that it seems to be genetically engineered to be thoroughly pleasant despite the fact that our lead snipers cyclists and poisons sleeping marks with elaborate gadgets. Opening with a rousing rendition of “I can see clearly now” by Johnny Nash that cheerfully plays over a botched mission that leaves four people (including the man Blank was hired to protect) full of more holes than a six foot cheese grater, the zippy tone carries you lightly over the more questionable aspects of our lead’s employment. What follows is essentially what you’d get if John Woo had made a rom-com as we alternate between snappy, Friends-like banter and blazing gunfire as our anxiety-ridden anti-hero makes a play to finally get the girl about a decade too late.
The result is something close to unfettered joy as everyone involved utterly nails everything that the movie has to offer with a effortlessly cool John Cusack playing Blank as if his character in Caneron Crowe’s Say Anything suddenly decided to shoot people in the chest in exchange for goods and services. Simultaneously witty, vunerable and completely capable of killing the President of Paraguay with a fork, Blank seems to be the perfect role for Cusack as he reels of lines of memorable wittisims as effortlessly as he unleashes a salvo of bullets.
Matching him quip for quip is a deliriously likable Minnie Driver who, with Good Will Hunting, completely owned 1997 and you totally buy that someone would pine after her for ten years. Is she a 90’s variation of the jocular, pixie dream girl? Sort of, but then Grosse Pointe Blank could hardly be accused or realism (there’s not a cop in sight for virtually the entire film despite various explosions) and that’s yet another part of the film’s endearing charm.
Rounding out the cast is as pitch perfect array of performers as you could hope for with Dan Ackroyd playing the typically anal, rival assasin, Grocer, who plays up the animosity between him and Blank with some hilariously jittery face to face meetings (“Bing bing bing bang POPCORN!”), Joan Cusack plays his predictably eccentric assistant, Jeremy Piven is his excitable best friend (“Ten years!”) and we even get Alan Arkin as Blank’s terrified therapist. All attempt to swipe the film from Cusack, but the fact that they fail is testament to how good the man’s choices were during the decade.
To match the measured, heartfelt comedy, director George Armitage stages some surprisingly high velocity action, which, while playing into the whole upbeat nature of the piece, still takes time to stage a hilarious, high octane, store shootout, a to-the-death brawl with an assasin played by Benny Urquidez that almost measures up to the superlative brawls he had with Jackie Chan and final shootout that also utilises TV sets and frying pans to boot.
However, the real nougaty centre of the film comes from Blank finally getting a reality check with help of the goggling gaze of an adorable baby and a perfect use of “Under Pressure” by Queen and it’s this underlying sweetness that’s helped Grosse Pointe Blank stick in my memory while other, more cynical crime comedies released at the sime time simply evaporated like dust.
As fitting for a hitman movie, Grosse Pointe Blank simply doesn’t miss, although I will say the relentless nineties-ness of it all may feel rather twee these days despite the hugely recognizable cast and an absolutely killer soundtrack. But to hell with that; as the film closes down with a surprising lack of ramifications to the sounds of “Blister in the Sun” by the Violent Femmes, it’s the warm feeling in your belly that matters – point blank.
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