NEW Hit List (DVD)

Be careful what you wish for. After having the worst day of his life Allan (Hauser) meets Jonas (Gooding Jr) at a bar. After talking to him Jonas says he can help Allan with his problems. Thinking it's a joke Allan gives him the name of five people he wants dead. When they begin to wind up dead Allan is the only one who can stop it. After watching "Sacrifice" I was not expecting much from this movie. This one, however, was very good. Even with Cuba's movie choices lately being one step above Val Kilmer's, his acting is far better. He does a good job playing a heartless killer on the verge of death himself. Cole Hauser also does a really good job playing an everyman trying to correct his mistakes. While there are many similarities to "Collateral" (and a hint of "The Shootist"), this movie is not as good, but it's not a huge decline from that movie. It is a pretty solid action, suspense movie that is well worth checking out. I give it a B.

Would I watch again? - I think I would

*Also try - Collateral & S.W.A.T. : Firefight

Allan (Cole Hauser) is having a bad day. His boss gave his promotion to a younger co-worker who stole his ideas. Allan goes home to find his wife sleeping with his best friend. Allan also has a shiner from making a bad bet and not being able to pay up. While guzzling JD at a bar he meets up with Jonas (Cuba Goodling) a Jose Cuervo man. Jonas tells Allan he is a hit man and has recently killed a conservative TV talking head. He asks Allen to make a list of 5 people he would want to have killed, and as his friend, Jonas will do it. Allen plays along, thinking this is good therapy, i.e. to make a list, but not really kill them. When Allen returns from the men's room, Jonas is gone with the list. By the time he gets to work the next day, his boss is dead.

After the second person is killed we find out Jonas is terminal and has decided to do some free lance killing. During the movie Cuba talks in broad philosophical terms, while Allan wants to stop the insanity of all the killing. The movie is embarrassingly predictable. I don't recall Goodling having such a lame role. Clearly his acting abilities were wasted as his part was designed for someone who could read lines without having to feel them. Unconvincing is perhaps the word that best describes the movie. 2 1/2 stars.

The Hit List inexplicably opens with some sort of James Bond-inspired opening credits. It doesn't really jive with the rest of the film, but two points for trying something a little different. The Hit List, outside of its crazy title credits, is a solid little Action/Thriller with a flair for the dramatic. A tight, intense script; solid leads; and just the right combination of explosive action and psychological drama are all present, and each an attribute usually reserved for superior pictures, with movies like The Hit List generally left to fend for themselves by simply going through the motions with no real purpose aside from gunfire and explosions.

The Hit List is still a relative success in terms of its potent combination of action, intensity, character dichotomies, and psychological tension. A sequence featuring Hasuer and Gooding, Jr. swapping war stories and woe-is-me tales in a darkly-lit pub that is suddenly turned on its head by an admission of murder and a willingness to carry out five more is the film's most chilling and captivating, with Gooding selling an intensely serious demeanor that's accompanied by a deviously and disturbingly playful edge. Hauser, in turn, delivers a fairly standard action hero performance; he runs around well and looks terrified enough, but this is clearly Gooding, Jr.'s show and he nails the part until the film falls apart in its final few minutes.

Indeed, The Hit List in its final act tries to become some strange hybrid that's part Collateral and part The Terminator. The similarities are striking, and even if the film never achieves close to the same level of greatness as either of those wonderful films, there's just enough personal identity in the rest of it to set The Hit List apart.

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