The Big Hit

C- Directed by Che-Kirk Wong Running Time: 1:32

Sometimes I wonder how certain movies get made. I imagine an executive sitting in his office with a pile of scripts in front of him. If the script has an a-list director or star attached, it goes into the "Make" pile. If it has a b-list star or director attached to it, it goes into the "Maybe" pile. And if it's just a script, it goes into the "Read" pile. So, after going through the "Make" and "Maybe" pile, let's say they have 15 movies that are actually going to be made. But they need more, a big movie company can't just release 15 movies in one year. So they go to the "Read" pile, and throw them all up in the air, and the first 10 or so that fall onto his desk, get made. This is how I think The Big Hit got made. It got lucky.

Mark Wahlberg, fresh off a star making turn in Boogie Nights stars as Melvin, a hitman with a heart (although he's engaged to Pam (Christina Applegate), but having an affair with Chantel (Lela Rochon), so how much heart does he really have?). He and a bunch of guys, including Cisco (Lou Diamond Phillips looking like a total moron) are hitmen for hire, hired by Paris (Avery Brooks) to kill all the bad people in the world. In order to make some extra cash, Cisco wants to kidnap a wealthy Japanese man's daughter. Melvin doesn't want to go along, but when you're trying to support two women, you need the money, so he decides to do it. Well, as it turns out, this girl happens to be the Goddaughter of... Paris. Isn't that a major coincidence? So Paris, being very upset, calls all of his hitmen in, and tells them to go find the bastards who kidnapped his goddaughter. Who does he put in charge? That's right, Cisco, the guy who kidnapped her in the first place. Another coincidence. Well, there are gunfights, car explosions, people supposed to be dead that aren't, and a huge finale inside a video store.

From start to finish I really didn't like this movie at all. The characters were inane, and most of the time pointless and unecessary. The whole story with the video store guy was stupid. The hitman who liked to masturbate, was stupid. Ok, so now some of you are saying, hey, this wasn't a serious movie, it was a joke, don't take it seriously. Well fine, in fact I didn't take it seriously, because it was impossible to take anything this bad, seriously. I think the director was excited by the fact that John Woo was producing, so he tried to make it into a John Woo film, and failed very badly. There were a few funny moments in the movie, but not enough to make it worthwhile. I liked the story idea, but it didn't play out like it could have. A little background on these people might have been nice. Get rid of all the coincidences and stereotypical action movie sequences and figure out what the main point of the story is. Is it about Melvin and his life? Is it an action film about a kidnapping gone wrong? Is it about greed and backstabbing on the part of Cisco? The entire time I was watching I couldn't tell if this was the greatest self-parody in history, or just a load of garbage. I came to the conclusion that it was the latter.