Once a week we’ll be taking underrated films and giving you reasons to watch. Each one is hand-picked, of a different genre, and easily accessed and enjoyed. First up: ‘Grosse Pointe Blank’ (1997).
SYNOPSIS: Martin Blank is a professional assassin. He is sent on a mission to a small Detroit suburb, Grosse Pointe, and, by coincidence, his ten-year high school reunion party is taking place at the same time.
Five reasons to watch one of the most underrated films of the 1990s:
1) The Soundtrack
Featuring: Violent Femmes, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Clash, The Specials, The Jam, Pixies, The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshies, Nena, The Beat, and of course David Bowie (featuring Queen); I am yet to come across a better, complete, soundtrack. Added to this, Joe Strummer (The Clash) wrote original music for the film as a favour for his close friend, John Cusack. In the hallway during the fight scene with Felix a banner can be seen which reads ‘The Future Is Unwritten’. This is a quote from Joe Strummer which also appears on the cover of The Clash’s single ‘Know Your Rights’.
2) Performances
For me, this includes several career-best performances. John Cusack is on top-form (High Fidelity only just tops it), adding a great deal of depth and humanity to what is essentially a romantic-action-comedy. The standouts? For starters there’s Dan Aykroyd – wonderfully unhinged as the pepped-up psycho antagonist who wants Blank to join his hitman union. Minnie Driver draws a lot of attention throughout, in her most endearing performance (more-so than in ‘Good Will Hunting’, in my opinion), Jeremy Piven delivers his finest comedy performance (inevitably the reason he got his best-known role Ari Gold in Entourage), Alan Arkin as the stressed therapist has only three scenes but delivers gold in every one, Joan Cusack as Blank’s erratic receptionist, Hank Azaria…the list goes on. Even the smallest roles are memorable and performed to perfection. This is thanks in large part because writer Tom Jankiewicz, who was raised in Sterling Heights, Michigan, based many of the film’s characters on his real-life friends.
3) Handling weighty themes with a light touch
Blank’s family home is now a convenience store, his mother – who has no idea who he is – now resides in a nursing home, he is suffering an identity crisis. Simple shots of silently pouring a bottle of whisky on a parent’s grave, or staring into the eyes of an infant, are handled with such a delicate touch, efficiently telling us all we need to know (usually around 10-15 seconds in length max!), each moment with so much weight behind them, that the film often feels like a revelation.
A path to enlightenment handled with grace and humour, never heavy-handed, John Cusack saw the film as a metaphor for the Reagan/Bush years. “I grew up fascinated by people in the Reagan administration, their ethics, their mercenary values,” he said in an interview. “People who plan wars and then go home to their wives and their kids … How do they live? To me, Grosse Pointe Blank was a metaphor for the people in the Bush White House.” Elsewhere, he described the movie as “a black comedy about the American Dream, that ‘win at all costs’ personality you see every day; a tongue-in-cheek look at the American value system.” To fit all of this into a romantic-action-comedy, which runs less than two hours in length, is nothing short of miraculous.
4) Romantic Comedy done right
There are a select few romantic comedies that do it right (‘When Harry Met Sally’ and ‘Annie Hall’ being other examples), without talking down to the audience or suffering from irrational character goals, instead opting to show the awkwardness, genuine connection, and subtle humour/in-jokes that really constitute a real-world partnership. The on-screen chemistry between Minnie Driver and John Cusack is some of the best in film history.
5) Entertainment meets art
Some films are too arty, alienating larger audiences from ever exporing them; some are pure entertainment and hollow at there core. One thing sorely missed in the 21st century film landscape, are films that bridge the gap successfully. The late 80s and 90s saw a peak in character-driven, enjoyable, entertaining films, which actually had a level of depth to them. To my mind, there aren’t many films as accessible or enjoyable start-to-finish as Grosse Pointe Blank, and fewer still that actually explore humanity with such compassion and depth.
TRIVIA
– According to director George Armitage, he “basically shot three movies simultaneously”: one that stuck to the script, one that was “mildly understated,” and one that went “completely over-the-top” in terms of improvisation and energy. It was usually the third version that got used. This means there could be alternate takes of nearly every scene still out there somewhere, depending on whether the studio retained the footage and what happened to it in the intervening years.
– Martin’s Blank’s invitation to his high school reunion, which is tucked into the mirror as he gets ready, requires attendees to Dress to Kill.
– Director George Armitage originally planned to shoot the high school scenes at Grosse Pointe South High, but was unable to get permission from the school board. They felt that it would be inappropriate to show someone graduating from Grosse Pointe’s school system to become a hit man.
– When talking to the prospective home-buyers, Martin says he has always felt “kind of temporary” about himself. This is the same thing Willy Loman says he feels when talking to Ben in “Death of a Salesman.”
– In the Ultimart shoot-out, a lobby cardboard cutout for the characters of Pulp Fiction can be seen getting shot to bits.