Hit Men Movies
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I had selected Jean-Pierre Melville's 1967 "Le Samouraï" and Johnnie To and Wai
Ka-fai's 2001 "Fulltime Killer" pretty much
at random from the local video store. But comparisons between these two 'noirs'
involving hit men and the cops who pursue them began to suggest themselves
immediately. Especially after 'fulltime killer' Tok
(Andy Lau), whose main interest outside of killing people on contract is
movies, berates a thug for never having seen "Le Samouraï".
Melville's Parisian hit man is improbably named Jef Costello. Played by Alain Delon,
this character has the same laconic charisma as the just as improbably named
master burglar Corey he played in Melville's 1970 "Le Cercle
Rouge", a film I reviewed a while back (http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/culture/Le_Cercle_Rouge.htm).
With their American names and their wardrobe lifted from a Bogart film, these
quintessentially Melvillian characters live outside
of society and eschew intimacy of any sort, except camaraderie with fellow
outlaws.
"Le Samouraï" begins
with bogus quote from the East: "There's no greater solitude that the
Samurai's, unless perhaps it be that of the tiger in the jungle." Written
by Melville himself, but attributed to the Japanese "Book of
Bushido", this is the same gimmick that he used in "Le Cercle Rouge." The film opens with a saying attributed
to the Buddha, but written by Melville himself, that men who are destined to
meet will eventually meet in the red circle of fate, no matter what.
Of course, the affinity between bowdlerized Japanese culture
and American b-movies is more than skin-deep. When Kurosawa's "The Seven
Samurai" inspired the western "Magnificent Seven", one might be
led to take into account the influence of classic western films on Kurosawa
himself early on in his career. Such is the nature of the film 'lingua franca'
that fertilized and cross-fertilized the work of so many directors and
screenwriters in the post-WWII period.
Jef Costello is bound by a strict
ethical code, despite the fact that he is violating one of the most sacrosanct
Ten Commandments on an ongoing basis. Unlike real life hit men such as Sammy
"The Bull" Gravano, this killer commands respect and admiration--even
if his life seems barren and unrewarding in most respects. Living in a dingy studio
apartment and enjoying no companionship except that of a pet bird, he seems to
live only for his next assignment. When he is betrayed by the men who hired him
to kill a nightclub owner, he risks everything--including capture by the police
who are following his every move--to pay them back.
"Fulltime Killer" pits the Chinese assassin Tok against his Japanese rival O (Takashi Sorimachi). Since Tok came close
to winning a gold medal in the Olympics target shooting competitions, he is
eminently qualified to kill his quarry, especially at long range. The only
thing that stands in his way to becoming Number One is the reclusive and
withdrawn O, who makes Jef Costello look like a
social butterfly.
Ostensibly living in modest bachelor digs, O actually occupies
a loft across the street which is stocked with the latest weaponry and
telephoto lenses. From the window of the loft, he voyeuristically gazes at his
housekeeper Chin (Kelly Lin) who suspects that her employer might be a hit man.
Whenever he lives town, she notices that there is a contract hit carried out in
the city he has just visited.
By contrast, Tok is outgoing and
affectionate in an almost manic fashion. When he runs into Chin, who works at a
video store when not looking after O's apartment, he is clad in a rubber Bill
Clinton mask like that used--as he puts it--in that film where the robbers all
wore such masks. (Point Blank). He later puts the mask
to good use when he kills a gangster and his henchmen in broad daylight not ten
blocks from where he has been having a pleasant lunch with Chin. He blandly
assures her that after he has killed a few bad men, he would rejoin her in no
more than fifteen minutes. He keeps his word.
The final confrontation between Tok
and O takes place in a fireworks factory and incorporates all of the elaborate
gunplay-choreography of a classic John Woo film.
Despite attempts by Martin Scorsese and others to strip the
romantic aura from the professional hit man in films such as "Goodfellas", this genre continues to have enormous
appeal. Such films are the quintessential escape. The heroes not only live
outside of bourgeois society, they seem to care little about its rules. With
their thin veneer of existentialism and their highly stylized presentation,
there is a commonality between Melville's work, a whole
They seem to flourish when the class struggle is in ebb--the
late 1940s were a good time for
"As a child, I was raised in the slums of
Perhaps with a rise in the class struggle, directors with
such feelings will be able to express themselves in a more hopeful fashion.