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This Gun For Hire

Prior to the 1940s, the hitman on film was generally “a thug, a side character, an oaf,” says film critic Christina Newland. “Then we see Alan Ladd in This Gun For Hire.” In the 1942 movie, Ladd plays a killer who gets more than he bargained for when he’s set up by a client. “It’s the rise of the film noir. There’s a little more psychological complexity… And all of a sudden we get a killer who’s elegant and slick,” says Christina.

Le Samouraï

Jean Pierre Melville’s 1967 cult hit has been a huge influence on many contemporary hitman films. “It’s a very mysterious film,” says Melville expert Ginette Vincendeau. “Very little is explained. It’s about a contract killer who doesn’t do very much on screen.” There’s no action to speak of and the story is not always easy to follow.

As Vincendeau says: “It’s a film where not a lot happens.” But it’s the style of the film that’s been immensely influential. “The way [Melville] organises images, sound and music, there’s a tension, constantly.”

Nikita

The hitman genre is not the sole preserve of men. There are many ‘hitman’ films centred on women, although they’re often seen through the male gaze. “It’s become a bit of a negative cliché… of a woman acting like a man, but sexy,” says Christina Newland. “It’s an update on the femme fatale for the '80s and '90s. It’s more about their ability to use their feminine wiles.”

That’s very true of Luc Besson’s 1990 film Nikita – called La Femme Nikita internationally – in which a young junkie (Anne Parillaud) is trained to be a glamorous killer. “A lot of it is about her having this sort of makeover,” Newland continues. “But it’s also interesting in that the whole thing about her being ‘reprogrammed’ is something we see again and again. It’s very influential in that way.” Its influence has been seen in projects like The Long Kiss Goodnight and the 2000s Joss Whedon TV show Dollhouse.

The Killer

David Fincher is one of the smartest, most stylish directors working today, but Mark Kermode isn’t sure about his hitman film, 2023’s The Killer, calling it “very standard”. Michael Fassbender plays a killer whose carefully controlled life unravels after a single mistake.

Christina Newland argues that it’s actually a demolition of the image of hitmen as glacially cool, ultra-slick operators. “His own arrogance is ultimately his downfall,” she says. “I think there’s a bit of a slyness about it, saying maybe we should be a bit more mistrustful of these extremely confident, individualistic men who think they’re so good at their job.”

Grosse Pointe Blank

As with any popular genre, there will eventually be a hip, post-modern take on it. And we got the hitman version of that in the brilliantly funny 1997 film Grosse Pointe Blank, about a killer (John Cusack), who heads to his hometown for a school reunion, but can’t seem to leave his work behind.

“The ironic, post-modern hitman film becomes very popular in the ’90s,” says Newland. “There’s a mistrust of the collective mainstream culture after the ’80s, and Gen X have a particular attitude of cynicism. We see that in Grosse Point Blank.”

Pulp Fiction

“Quentin Tarantino is undoubtedly the poster boy for the quipping hitman,” says Newland. Paid killers show up in several of his films, but none more memorably than Jules and Vincent (Samuel L Jackson and John Travolta) in 1994’s Pulp Fiction. Jules especially is a killer with plenty to say for himself, giving his victims long speeches before dispatching them. And really excellent speeches they are too. Did we break your concentration?

Kill List

A very British take on hitman concept, Ben Wheatley’s 2011 film follows two ex-soldiers (Neil Maskell and Michael Smiley) who, struggling to find work, take employment as killers. “It started with a pun: Get Jakarta,” says Kill List’s director, Wheatley. “I wanted to set it in Jakarta and it was basically the plot of Get Carter.”

Then the idea changed to an exploration of what a realistic hitman film might look like, without all the international glamour. “What’s the life of these guys like as they go through hit to hit,” says Wheatley. “What might their lives look like?” He says he wanted to treat the job as realistically as if they were plumbers or carpenters.

Hit Man

Very loosely based on a true story, Richard Linklater’s 2023 comedy is a challenge to the very concept of hitmen. “The heart of that film is that there aren’t such things as hitmen,” says Mark, “they're just people playing roles.”

Adria Arjona and Glen Powell in Hit Man.

Glen Powell is a nerdy professor who has a sideline pretending to be a hitman in police sting operations, to help catch would-be murderers. Christina Newland says: “It’s a very fun commentary on the falseness of that whole persona.”

Black Doves

Joe Barton’s 2024 Netflix TV series is a very fun drama about a politician’s wife (Keira Knightley) who moonlights as a spy, and is friends with a hitman (Ben Whishaw) who’d quite like to settle down.

It’s a wry take on the idea that even when your job involves guns and taking down multiple bad guys, trying to find work/life balance can still be a pain.

Find why we're so drawn to these deadly characters by listening to the episode in full on 91热爆 Sounds.