director
Che-Kirk Wong
screenwriter
Ben Ramsey
producers
Wesley Snipes
Warren Zide
cinematographer
Danny Nowak
music
Graeme Revell
editors
Robin Russell
Pietro Scalia
cast
Mark Wahlberg (Melvin Smiley)
Lou Diamond Phillips (Cisco)
Christina Applegate (Pam Shulman)
Bokeem Woodbine (Crunch)
Antonio Sabato Jr. (Vince)
China Chow (Keiko Nishi)
Avery Brooks (Paris)
Lainie Kazan (Jeanne Shulman)
Elliott Gould (Morton Shulman)
Sab Shimono (Jiro Nishi)
Lela Rochon (Chantel)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 91m
u.s.
release: 4/24/98
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official
website
|
Is
Quentin Tarantino the worst thing to happen to American movies
in the '90s? In a rational, cool-headed moment, you'd probably
say no. But after suffering through some of the Tarantinoid rip-offs
of the last couple of years -- like 2
Days in the Valley and the abominable new The Big
Hit -- you catch yourself wishing that Reservoir
Dogs and Pulp Fiction
had flopped, so that no wannabe-hip filmmakers would want to
emulate him and no studio would want to bankroll the rip-offs.
The Big Hit wants to be ironic and grisly in the tradition
of Tarantino, mixing blood 'n' guts with knee-slappers (two guys
dump trash bags full of severed limbs into a car trunk -- that's
the movie's first shot), but it achieves only a jokey tone of
free-floating triviality. The script, by rookie writer Ben Ramsey,
is among the most disgraceful screenplays ever to be produced
by a major studio (Tri-Star). It plays as if written by Tarantino's
cretinous evil twin -- it has no connection whatsoever to life
outside video stores, and almost everyone on the screen is annoying
and shallow.
Mark Wahlberg is the "hero," Melvin Smiley, a soft-hearted
hit man who wants to please everyone. "I can't stand it
when people don't like me," he says -- which raises the
question of why he got into killing for hire. Essentially, Melvin
is Dirk Diggler with a big gun instead of a big schlong; both
characters are too sensitive for the callous lives they lead.
One gets the impression that Wahlberg is trying to atone for
his real-life street-punk background by playing doe-eyed male
waifs in movies like this and Boogie
Nights. But at least he isn't actively irritating.
No, that honor is reserved for Lou Diamond Phillips, who plays
Cisco, Melvin's duplicitous partner. Cisco kidnaps a Japanese
student (China Chow), the daughter of a big executive who's just
gone broke making a flop movie. When Cisco learns that the student
is the goddaughter of his menacing boss Paris (Avery Brooks,
wasted here), he frames Melvin and spends many scenes flashing
his fake gold tooth and beating a certain twelve-letter epithet
into the ground. Phillips is doing a Gary Oldman turn (specifically,
Oldman's Drexl the dreadlocked pimp in True
Romance), but the problem is that Phillips is to Oldman
what Cheez Whiz is to caviar.
The director-for-hire here is Che-Kirk Wong, who did the well-respected
Jackie Chan film Crime Story, and he throws in a lot of
impressive stuntwork. Too bad the unscannable Cuisinart editing
turns it into gibberish. The worst thing about the editing is
what it leaves in. I, for one, would have deleted each and every
frame dealing with Melvin's fiancée (Christina Applegate)
and her dreadful Jewish-stereotype parents (Lainie Kazan and
Elliott Gould), as well as the material about his other girlfriend
(Lela Rochon), who keeps harping on him to make money to pay
her bills. But this is really nitpicking -- the entire movie
is composed of scenes that go nowhere.
For an example of an excellent movie that does everything this
film so ineptly tries to do, look at Grosse
Pointe Blank, from which The Big Hit swipes so
blatantly that John Cusack should get a screen credit. GPB
was about something besides hipster irony and farcical violence;
The Big Hit is about nothing except cynicism and sensation.
It's the worst of the worst -- an example of a new lazy trend
in screenwriting, wherein the writer just assembles cool stuff
from other movies that he wants to see all together in one movie.
Tarantino does that, too, but he can get away with it because
he writes sizzling dialogue and rich characters. If only the
new hipsters emulated those Tarantinoid trademarks! But
skillful characterization -- even competent characterization
-- seems quite beyond them.
So I end with another question: The Big Hit will very
likely be the worst major release of the year, but would I go
so far as to call it the worst film of the decade? In a rational,
cool-headed moment, I might say no. But I think of Pulp Fiction
and the great independent-film renaissance it could have inspired,
and then I think of miserable shit like this, which is what it
actually has inspired ... I don't know; it's a tough call.
What movie of the '90s could be worse than The Big Hit? |