I Hired a Contract Killer Poster

I Hired a Contract Killer (1990)

Comedy | Romance 
Rayting:   7.3/10 5.8K votes
Country: Finland | Sweden
Language: English
Release date: 15 March 1991

After fifteen years' service, Henri Boulanger is made redundant from his job. Shocked, he attempts suicide, but can't go through with it, so he hires a contract killer in a seedy bar to ...

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squelcho 8 September 2005

The settings are suitably grim and grimy. Most of the cast are oddly antisocial enough to fit neatly into the Kaurismaki vision of sixties' London bleakness. Jean-Pierre Leaud is morbidly deadpan in a truly Finnish way. Kenneth Colley is a wistful hit-man par excellence. The stifling dullness of the Orwellian ministry and the heartstopping nature of abrupt redundancy are beautifully drawn. The only thing that drags this movie down from Kaurismaki's usual lofty heights of cruel farce is the awful wooden performance by Margi Clarke as the "love" interest.

I have no idea why she was chosen ahead of the other 3 billion women on the planet to play the role, but she stinks up the place something rotten. She is so grimly unconvincing that I was grinding my teeth within ten minutes of her introduction. What should have been a brilliant dark comedy was turned into a dire soap episode by an artless performance of hitherto unimaginable ineptitude. It would appear that sublime irony is not her strongpoint. Nor is holding onto a single convincing accent for the duration. From Liverpool to Roedean in an hour. Hello nosebleed.

I've seen her play her usual gobby scouser part in innumerable "gritty" TV dramas, and found her bearable at worst. But here, she kills the atmosphere stone dead with her awful timing and dismal delivery. If only her performance was a joke of the "so bad it's good variety", but it isn't. It's just lame. I'm assuming that Aki cast her on the strength of Letter to Brezhnev or his brother's Helsinki-Napoli, but rarely has anyone been so wretchedly miscast in any of his movies. Even Joe Strummer comes out smelling of roses(and beer and cigs).

A real shame, because the mood of the movie is fantastic. The props and locations are homages to a London long since redeveloped. The giant Corona bottle in the pub is a particularly neat touch. As is the fact that everyone's smoking Players and Capstans. Worth a remake with a decent actress who has some understanding of irony and understatement.

redredred_13 8 April 2008

Fmovies: Do you like classics? Do you have a thing for Hitchcock, or lets say, Jean Pierre Melville? Do you wanna see how does that translate into a more modern progressive movie? Well! here is what you do: You go straight to a club and you purchase 'I Hired a Contract Killer'! It sticks with you; the futility, the humor, and the suspense. This is a picture that no matter what, you gonna remember for ever. The futility is so rich, that itself becomes the core meaning to everything. And the situation gets so baffled that emptiness becomes a survival. The suspension is perfectly 'Hitchcokic'& the use of music is great. It is among the pictures that secures you; makes you sure that still cinema exists; A cinema that tells you a story, a breathtaking one - and damn, Kourismaki is a great story teller; a noble one. One of the few left from the true heritage of motion picture industry and art. Lay back, watch and enjoy. This is pure cinema. As you might have guessed, I fully recommend it!

Rodrigo_Amaro 14 March 2014

"I Hired a Contract Killer" unites on the same crossroad two helpless and persistent souls of the world cinema, working with a plot that suits them almost perfectly: director/writer Aki Kaurismaki and actor Jean-Pierre Léaud. I include the latter not much because of his real persona but mostly due to his most commonly associated character, the troubled Antoine Doinel, which in a way could be a figure of a Kaurismaki film and the director takes some advantage of that to make Léaud be part of his strange yet dark humored vignettes involving helpless characters dealing with meaningless lives until they find exquisite solutions for their problems.

The eternal Doinel, usually confident and striving for a certain goal (as evidenced in his later adventures post "The 400 Blows"), gives space to Henri Boulanger, a French subordinate working on a bureaucratic position at a British company, utterly lost and alone, until the day he gets fired from there, receiving as a gift a broken gold watch. With the money he still has, he decides to hire a hit-man to kill him since he's too yellow to kill himself. Why bother sticking around now that he really hit rock bottom, with no job, no people who care for him and being just another foreigner living in a cold and distant place.

But the man who brought us "Ariel" and "Shadows in Paradise" has to give Henri a turn-around that can save his life and also complicates things even more. He falls for a flower girl (Margi Clarke) who corresponds such love, they move in together, despite the fact he has nothing to offer to her but the hired killer (Kenneth Corley) is still tracking him down and he is destined to fulfill his contract and kill Henri. Typical of Kaurismaki, who always finds humor in desolated characters and awkward situations. Everything is strangely life affirming without getting near the corny clichés of Hollywood.

The union between Kaurismaki and Léaud is the main ingredient to enjoy such story, not as dark as it sounds but eventually nightmarish as Henri's problems becomes more and more unnerving (hilarious to some, but we all know that Aki's films are only amusing to very few who can actually laugh out loud - though that's not the director's intentions, he prefers the contained laughters). It's interesting to see Léaud becoming the anti-Doinel, here someone who is far removed from any chance of accomplishing anything, always escaping and giving up easily. But fate helps them both, in unexpected and intriguing ways. And we laugh at their confusion while facing the obstacles life throws at them.

Compared with other Kaurismaki films I've seen and Doinel's five films, "I Hired a Contract Killer" is miles away of being equally great as the fore-mentioned examples. And for the first time I identified more with the drama than with the comedy since most of the elements given were too hollow and so narrow with the drama that I couldn't find them much funny - characteristic of the Finnish creator but more effective in his other films. Another downer was having to deal with Léaud's poor English, practically impossible to understand. Why not make Henri meeting with a French girl, so there could be a real sense of connection between both (and captions so we can read instead of hearing forced accents)? Aside that, there's room for some fine suspense and a great musical cameo by Joe Strummer.

What's to be learned? With Doinel films I feel hope, courage and the

fefe23 21 March 2004

I Hired a Contract Killer fmovies. I only saw this movie once, over a decade ago. It was horrible. Noone laughed or even smiled in it, all the scenery was bleak, the story was depressing, and it almost made the audience feel suicidal as well (like the protagonist).

But, with each passing year, I like this movie more. I'm very much looking forward to seeing it again. It actually is a great comedy, but it took me years to understand that.

Should you see it? Definitely. I still remember this obscure movie after over 10 years and although I hated it at first. It inspired me enough to write this comment here. About how many movies can you say that?

antoinecatry 17 August 2010

Among the few Kaurismaki films I have seen so far, this is the one I think the most accessible and I strongly recommend it. My impression of it is completely vivid as I have just watched it minutes ago from the box I was offered a year ago for my 30's: a great present for movie maniacs. Kaurismaki does not film Helsinki this time, but another capital:London, with the same kind of views, the same urban landscapes, the beauty and the strangeness, the same insisting and passionate obsession than Scorsese with his New York. You still can find the same taciturnity of characters (perfect Kenneth Colley as the killer: I was glad to recognize Admiral Piett from The Empire Strikes Back), the same type of slow narration, though this time, the story is far simpler to understand upon first visualization. It deals with life and its contradictions, the preciosity of it, changes of mind and regrets, how desire between two people can make you see things differently, make you want to live on ; love regardless of social discrimination, that is so beautiful and yet so ideal! Another great point in Kaurismaki's films consists in the appropriate inclusion of a more or less famous rock music: perfect Joe Strummer, RIP. A great moment of poetry in cinema and a perfect film fit for beginners in Kaurismaki.

ms-52486 19 August 2016

The premise of this film is funny and odd: an employee of a British company loses his job, and because there is nothing to life for, he decides to end it right there. But all the attempts on his own life fail. Still determined, he decides to hire a contract killer - and have himself murdered.

While waiting for the executioner in his apartment, he grows bored and decides to visit a bar across the street. There he indulges himself, for the first time, in hard liquor and cigarettes. As if this wouldn't be upsetting enough to his short remaining life span, he meets a flower girl with blood-red lips. Resolutely, he demands that she sits next to him, and inevitably falls in love. All over sudden, life isn't so despicable anymore - what to do? The contract killer is still on his heels...

Kaurismäki takes this story as an occasion to revive his cinematic universe: people standing at a bar and slowly lifting a glass of beer, others sitting in front of worn-out wallpapers while smoking a cigarette. The camera lingers as if those quiet moments were a subtle study of humans on the fringes of society. They are connected through the central theme of the film, but the main focus lies on Henri Boulanger, the former employee. Stoically and with a deadpan face, he undergoes the metamorphosis of his existence, subtly expressing his newfound hunger for life. Standing in a bar and listening to an unknown guitarist (Joe Strummer), he lifts his drink and takes a long gulp. From all we know, this is the equivalent of a spontaneous expression of joy in Finland. You are required to observe and listen quite carefully, but if you do, this very refrained way of celebrating the small pleasures of everyday life is not less powerful, especially against the background of Henri's rather meaningless existence. Kaursimäki doesn't need any loud effects or tearful scenes to convince us, he doesn't even need dialogue, of which there is very little in the film. He tells the story purely through the images and the strong, yet sparing expressions of his protagonists. The lighting of the scenes is somber and full of strong contrasts, giving the film it's own unique visual mark. I Hired a Contract Killer is like a slow burning fire that still provides warmth long after the big fireworks are spent.

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