THE BIG HIT
1/2
Rebecca Wan
Directed by : Che-Kirk Wong
Written by: Ben Ramsey
Main Cast : Mark Wahlberg, Lou Diamond Phillips, Christina Applegate, Avery Brooks, Lainie Kazan, China Chow, Lela Rochon, Elliot Gould.
Produced by: Sony Pictures Entertainment/ Tri-star Pictures
Official Website: www.sonypictures.com/movies/thebighit/.
Rating : * * * 1/2 out of * * * * *
This Review Filed: September 27, 1998.
It's fitting that the mandatory "good guy finally kicks bad guy's butt in scene with big explosion" finale of THE BIG HIT has Mark Wahlberg and Lou Diamond Phillips crashing about and hurling each other against tape-filled shelves in a shiny, cavernous, video rental store. The scene is a brash, postmodern orchestration that reflects the outrageous, semi-farcical joie de vivre that characterises so much of THE BIG HIT.
Directed by Che-Kirk Wong of CRIME STORY, and produced by the Moses of the Hollywood Asian exodus (does "Asian" mean "Chinese" now?), John Woo, THE BIG HIT is a delightful combination of showy choreography, obnoxious club music and stereotypical overacting. As is the trend these days, Wong's Hollywood debut is a fluffy distillation of early Tarentinoism, a portrait of a hitman set to non-stop music and refined with a hefty overdose of ganstaspeak.
But even if you do cringe when hearing cute-as-a-button Wahlberg say "Yo' Cisco, where you at? I need some f****** backup, man" while stylishly dodging bullet barrages and spinning like a breakdancer as he unloads his weapon in the thrilling slow motion we Pavlovian audiences must be trained to love by now, it's still hard not to smile at THE BIG HIT's array of larger-than-life characters and its frenetic, cartoon-like excess.
Leading the pack is Mark Walberg as Melvin Smiley (ENGLISH PATIENT lovers are advised that the film reeks of this kind of discreet symbolism), an antacid-guzzling hitman who is tops at his job but overstressed by his social relationships. Smiley is too much of a pleaser, unable to bear the thought of anyone not liking him. His don't-hate-me demeanour produces tensions with colleague Cisco (Phillips), who blithely steals his bonus from under his nose. And because he can't bear for his fiancee (played by Christina Applegate) and his girlfriend (Lela Rochon) not to like him, he is financially drained from trying to fuel their cash-hungry demands. He is, as another girlfriend-to-be puts it, quite soundly "whipped."
The need to buoy up his savings account leads him to join Cisco and friends on a moonlighting gig -- the kidnapping of a Japanese businessman's daughter, Keiko Nishi (played by a severely annoying China Chow). But it's discovered that Keiko is the goddaughter of the kidnappers' own boss, Paris (Avery Brooks). An unknowing Paris appoints the treacherous Cisco chief in charge of nosing out and disembowelling the kidnappers. Meanwhile, Smiley has to contend with his fiancee's irratic parents, an impatient girlfriend and a kidnappee who in her attempts to escape wanders dangerously around his surburban home.
The broadness of the comedy in THE BIG HIT is such that Smiley's anxiety when interacting at high stress levels is indicated by pauses in which loud rumbling stomach noises betraying his acidicity level are heard. Many scenes,including one where Keiko's father is interrupted from committing hara-kiri by a ringing handphone, verge on sheer slapstick. Then there's the hideous overkill of Loud Diamond Phillips' smart-talking "badass" portrayal and the patently unfunny stuttering of his sidekick, a wannabe hoodster.
Yet despite all of this, THE BIG HIT is so fast-paced that its music video, commercial-like slickness and thumping soundtrack effortlessly gel stunt to story in a way that will leave you breathless, at times with laughter, at others with admiration. If THE BIG HIT is clunky and unrealistic in depicting the conflict of Smiley's dead-serious assassin facade with his polite, insecure nice-guy persona, it's because it deliberately eschews the kind of Hollywood realism that necessarily governs conventional cinema. For pete's sake, it's a FILM ABOUT A HITMAN, exactly how realistic would you like them to be?
Instead, THE BIG HIT is replete with expository references that target Hollywood cliches and stylistic signatures (the poseur hoodster, for example, is named Gump; Keiko and Smiley intimately knead chicken stuffing a la GHOST's Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore). At the same, director Wong expertly delivers heapings of violence, mayhem and explosions with B-movie panache that has come to characterise many Hong Kong movies for non-experts like me.
If blatant gags aren't your cup of tea, therefore, then THE BIG HIT might still score points for its stylish, noisy hipness, the kind that seems to be becoming more and more in vogue today.
The Flying Inkpot's Rating System
* Wait for the TV2 broadcast.
** A little creaky, but still better than staying at home with Gotcha!
*** Pretty good, bring a friend.
**** Amazing, potent stuff.
***** Perfection. See it twice.
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