Grosse Pointe Blank

They say a camel is a horse designed by a committee. Well, with four screenwriters, this is a camel of a film. John Cusack and Dan Aykroyd don't make it as hit men for me to begin with. Cusack was great playing against type as Nelson Rockefeller in Cradle Will Rock, but he keeps just enough of his lovesick blues to make himself look miscast here. Aykroyd is just too much of a goofball to pull of this role. The buildup to any sort of satisfying payoff just isn't enough to sustain you through the film. And the payoff isn't much anyway. Even though this predates Analyze This and The Sopranos, the psychiatrist scenes seem a little derivative, but Alan Arkin does a great job, and the scenes with Arkin and Cusack are wonderful. As usual Cusack and sister Joan have some great scenes together, but they don't compensate for what is otherwise a rather tiring story.

I've keeping my run of John Cusack movies with each trip to the library. Not that I'm on the lookout for his old movies deliberately, it just happens. Not that I'm complaining, but he's always been one of the few who play characters so diverse, it's almost impossible to stereotype him. He's fast becoming one of my favorite actors, besides Morgan Freeman, and Denzel Washington, amongst others. School reunions are one of those social events that you either love, or loathe. If you're a somebody back then, and are sort of somebody right now, it presents to you an opportunity to brag about it. If you're cruising along fine, then you're probably curious about how others are doing, and want to take stock. If you're a nobody then, or now, then you'll probably not want to attend at all. John Cusack plays Martin Blank, a professional hit-man whose at the crossroads of that decision. 10 years ago, he abandoned his date for the prom, and never made contact ever since. Also, he's wondering how he could possibly tell anyone about his current profession. He's also finding that life is becoming meaningless, and is seeking for something to lift him up from the doldrums. His secretary (played by real life sister Joan Cusack - there are a total of 4 Cusack siblings in this movie) arranges a perfect opportunity for him to mesh work and play, and packs him off back to Grosse Pointe. Naturally he seeks out his old flame Debi Newberry (Minnie Driver), and tries his best to make amends by offering to go to the reunion with her. However, his nemesis and hit-man rival Grocer, played to hilarity by Dan Ackroyd, is mad at Blank for not wanting to join up in his union, and he wants to bump Blank off. He's provided with some of the best dialog, and banters with Cusack so well, you just beg for more of their scenes together. It's a quirky movie (aren't most of Cusack's movies) which is thoroughly enjoyable with its excellent selection of songs, wonderful dialog, and delightful action toward the end. Watch out too for a short appearance by Jenna Elfman! The Code 1 DVD is nothing to shout about - the bare bones version.

This movie is one of the most boring movies I have seen so far. In this movie there are only two good scenes and the pace is okay, but otherwise it is a rather silly or even preposterous movie. Story is as well ridiculous. There are no other funny things about and everything is exaggerated. The actors and actresses are okay, although I have seen better movies from Cusack, Akroyd and Driver. I would recommend Blues brothers for Dan Akroyd, Good Will Hunting for Minnie Driver and Con Air for Cusack. If you haven't seen this movie, you haven't missed much. The percentage of reality is very low (what could happen in reality) and also as a fiction there are better ones.

It seems at least vaguely possible that this movie provided a bit of inspiration for "The Sopranos," as its main character, Martin Blank (John Cusack) is a hit man who has so many issues from his past and his profession that he's in therapy trying to deal with it all. Everything finally comes to a head at his 10-year high school reunion. The problem was that by the time Blank got to the reunion I had stopped caring. Frankly, I found this movie a drag from start to finish. It had potential. There was a reasonably good cast, headed by Cusack and Dan Aykroyd, playing Grocer, his arch-rival in the hit-man business, along with Minnie Driver as Debi, Blank's high school sweetheart who he stood up on prom night, and a limited role for Alan Arkin as Dr. Oatman, Blank's psychologist. That fairly talented cast never really seemed to come together, though. The drama lacked intensity and the comedy lacked real humour. What I thought had the most potential to be a comedic storyline was Grocer's proposal for a hit man's union, but aside from becoming a bit of a running joke, the idea never really got developed. As for the romance, one wondered why Debi would even think of letting this guy back into her life. There were a handful of chuckles, but nothing really caught me and held me and I spent most of the movie wondering whether this thing was ever going to start to click. It never did - not for me, at least. 2/10

Directed by George Armitage, "Grosse Pointe Blank" stars John Cusack as Martin Blank, a neurotic hit-man who has spent the last ten years of his life stuck in an existential rut. As such, Blank spends most his time contemplating the meaning of life, reading magazines titled "making sense of creation" and brooding about the perceived pointless of all existence. If life has no worth, Blank muses, then why not profit from killing? In true Woody Allen fashion, Blank discusses all these issues with his psychiatrist (played brilliantly by Allan Arkin). He's searching for some meaning, anything to fill a certain existential void, an emotional roller-coaster which Cusack has made a career out of conveying. Indeed, Cusack made a name for himself in the 1980s playing wisecracking teenagers who struggle with adulthood, are contemptuous of others and posses an inner wisdom. You might say "Blank" takes these characters and pushes them toward sociopathy. Cusack has always been cool, but here he oozes ultra-cool, ever body motion, mannerism and gesture fine-tuned. The film offers an endless stream of witty dialogue, numerous neat, subtle touches (Blank is very picky about where he sits), a killer soundtrack and a hilarious subplot featuring Dan Aykroyd as a fast-talking, overweight hit-man. Aykroyd's attempting to set up a hit-man trade union ("Solidarity!"), but Blank's not interested in joining. The duo share a priceless scene in a café, both men with weapons hidden under a table. Bizarrely, "Grosse Pointe" marries at least six genres. It's a high-school reunion movie, an assassin flick, a return-to-small-town movie, a romantic comedy, action film and 1980s teen nostalgia flick. Armitage handles the tropes of all these genres well, but outdoes himself with the film's many action sequences. They're surprisingly well choreographed, particularly an intense fist-fight with famed martial artist Benny Urquidez. Much of the film plays like a 1980s, teen flick. Here Minnie Driver's the object of Blank's affection, she playing the girl Blank abandoned 10 years earlier at a high school dance. Blank's attempting to reconnect with her as a means of escaping what is essentially a stasis borne of nihilism and apathy, a fact which gives the film's eighties nostalgia some touching subtext. Blank wants to mend his childhood, to start over, but the universe won't let him. In the end, it's Driver who embraces Blank's philosophy, though Blank changes a little too. In one scene, holding a baby whilst Queen waffles on the soundtrack ("...dares you to change your way of caring...."), Blank learns something about the fragility and preciousness of life. Seconds later he kills a guy and dumps the body in a furnace. Baby steps. The film's romantic climax is rushed and unconvincing, and Minnie Driver irks with the facial bone structure of a caveman. Still, "Grosse Pointe" is some kind of classic, and in a way continues the evolution of the hit-man genre (from Yojimbo to Le Samourai to The Professional (1980) to Nikita to Leon to Ghost Dog to Grosse Pointe Blank). Here, Cusack acts as a sort of deconstruction of the Hit-man. No longer is he an angel of death (Melville's film), or a mentally damaged human, but a totally self-aware, thoroughly postmodern, neurotic wreck. The film completely autopsies the genre, which will probably lead to a lot of noble, somber, "stable" and "righteous" hit-man movies in the future. Every genre's eventually reset. 9/10 – Cult classic. See "High Fidelity" and "Pump Up The Volume".

Although not nearly as popular as it deserves to be, GROSS POINTE BLANK has become an increasingly respected cult flick in the year following its theatrical release and it's not hard to see why. The movie is probably the only film on earth that is able to blend comedy, graphic violence, and romance together perfectly, which is what makes it such a classic. John Cusack is excellent as Martin Q. Blank, a hit-man who attends his ten-year high school reunion. At first he doesn't want to, but decides to go since he has a case there and he wants to see his old girlfriend Debbie (Minnie Driver) again. This dark comedy is heavy on exciting action, suspense, gunfire, laughs, and fun, but it doesn't have not quite enough character development for my taste (a bit more on how Martin became accustomed to killing would have been nice). Still, GROSSE POINTE BLANK was one of the best films of 1997 and one of the better comedies of the 1990s. There were rumors of a sequel happening for a while, though the chances of that happening are slim to none. Too bad.

Some movies have a good story that is made great by the casting. This is one such film. It has a cast to die for and makes what could have been an interesting film superb. John and Joan Cusack play great characters along with Minnie Driver in a film about a hit man returning to his home town for a high school reunion. he reconnects with a lost love while competitors are trying to rub him out. There is an assortment of characters in the film: Alan Arkin (Little Miss Sunshine) as Dr. Oatman; Dan Akroyd as Blank's main competitor; Hank Azaria, K. Todd Freeman and Jeremy Piven. This film has enough laughs amid the shooting and romance to satisfy anyone.

What a confused movie this is. Is it a comedy? A Pulp Fiction wannabe? A John Hughes Eighties High School movie? It tries to be all three, but in doing that it fails to be what it needs to be: a good movie. It's very Pulp Fiction-ish in its use of "witty banter during extreme gunplay." The John Hughes element is obvious...Cusack could even be the same character from Better Off Dead ten years later. In fact, THAT would have been funny, but I digress. If it's an action movie, I think Cusack and Aykroyd are miscast. Maybe not Cusack so much, but Aykroyd just sucks. As in most action movies, the characters use their guns like hoses and only reload after 50 shots have been fired from a pistol that holds 10 bullets. The romance is not convincing. There's just no chemistry between Driver and Cusack, and not much time is spent on them. Nor is enough time spent with Cusack's old school friends and enemies, which could have been fodder for a better movie. Particularly shocking is the violence in this supposed comedy. (SPOILERS) Cusack's encounter with the "ghoul" in the school ends disturbingly, in my opinion. And I have no problem with violence...Pulp Fiction was great, but of course it wasn't marketing itself as a comedy! And the gunning down of the two NSA agents at the end just makes no sense and didn't seem to even fit with where the movie was supposed to go. The movie could have been FUNNY if Cusack's character was a bumbling hitman, not an expert assassin. But hey, that's just my opinion.

About the same time as this film was made there was a spate of hitman focused comedy dramas (from Leon to Coldblooded) so this risked being viewed in the same way as these. This is strictly a comedy - there's no deep soul searching here, the analyst is also in it for comedy value. The story is funny and lively, the soundtrack reminded us that not all 80's music was rubbish and the whole feel of the film is one that it must have been fun to make. John Cusack is excellent as the hitman, he just seems to bring the character to life and play him in a jokey way without making fun of the film, Dan Akroyd gets the best role he's had in years as the hitman trying to get Cusack to join his union, while Minnie Driver is girly and fun - the whole cast are excellent in fact! The film is not a classic by any means and many see it as a down side that it ignores any serious issues or that the film is set so far away from reality but for me this is part of the fun. Sit down, don't take it seriously and just enjoy the ride!

Good movie. Particularly the part where John Cusack is using the frying pan to put his point across to the bad guy on the kitchen floor. It's hard not to belly laugh. I thought it took cues from 'Blue Velvet', with its uncommon blend of humour and ultra-violence. I read that parts of the dialogue were contributed by Cusack and a couple of [real-life] school friends, though cannot confirm this. It's believeable though - for example when he meets the legal guy propping up the bar at the re-union. His offering of the pen, the aside that Cusack should 'read the cap' and asking to use the funny quip - 'they all seem kinda related' - must have been based on a real person. Too sad to be fiction. Minnie [cab] Driver, Joan Cusack and Dan Ackroyd personalise their performances very well. The support cast were excellent too. The music was an oddly enjoyable mix and the fight sequence with the pen was the most realistic (and exhausting) I'd seen. It was the attention to small detail which swung it in the end though. Cusack's buddy's coke-fuelled, paranoid banter was spot on ("Jenny Slater, Jenny Slater") as was the burning the fingers on the furnace, to name just two random details. The effect of this, is that they all add up to a movie which you can enjoy watching many times. And that makes it a rare gem.