Grosse Pointe Blank (1997)

I wanted to but couldn't!

Best movie ever!

A Major Disappointment

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

If you are at all into interested in the following sections of assassination films, with a dark humor meshed with it, classic 90s films and John Cusack you will love this movie. I was intrigued just from the trailer. I watched it and you can see why John is such a successful and great actor, he puts all his effort into films and it just makes them better. I loved the humor of this film, its quite dark, so not to everyone's taste, but I laughed my head off.

Great and recommended for a variety of reasons.A "bumble bee" movie, on paper it seems crazy, hi-concept, and unlikely to work. In reality with a killer script, killer direction and great acting, one of the most memorable and entertaining films of the era.Holds up well on a second or third viewing.Is a comedy or an action film with elements of satire? That is the genius. It is hard to tell.A demarcation point for Cusack -- likely the last film in which he was able to recreate the "charm" of his "brat pack" days, and he milks it for what it is worth. Shortly thereafter he became (according to his agent) "the hardest working actor in Hollywood" and went for clearly adult roles.Great film.

The pun in the movie title says it all: Grosse Pointe Blank is a brat movie, a movie students could have written (and shot for a portion of the budget) as a joke and a tribute to their teenage years.Basically the dumb thing that cries "mediocre student joke" here is the discrepancy between reality and fantasy. If you're seriously about to make the best movie possible, you have to choose: to spoof or not to spoof. Spoof comedy is OK as long as everything is a joke and that it runs at Mach 3.9; conversely a serious hit-man drama/thriller is OK as long as you stay the course.Spoof is already aiming at the lowest hurdle, but when you just spoof up an otherwise "straight" drama/thriller/romcom... (you name it) that is just blatantly incompetent. Cusack's fans and lenient teenage souls amongst IMDb reviewers rank this movie high yet the average reviewer is bound to be bored by the tone skids, the "funky violence" shootings that bury the attempt to tell a clever story about an isolated hit-man and a rush of nostalgia. Those shootings were gross and plundered a storyline which already verged to much on the spoofy side (cf. Blank's contracts before leaving for Grosse Pointe).

I'd love to know if John Cusack actually had to audition for the role of Martin Blank or if it was tailor-made for him. Because it certainly seems to have been. GROSSE POINTE BLANK fits his comically dark persona so perfectly and he's incredible in the movie, as a result. It's got a great hook: a hit-man going back to high school for the ten-year reunion. And I love the movie's sense of humor; a professional killer who's in therapy; that no one takes him seriously when he tells them his trade. And the comedy lends an acuteness to the violent scenes, and things can get kinda nasty. The locker fight, especially, is a terrific scene. It's set to the best song on the soundtrack, it's in your face, and comes out of nowhere. I can't think of another actor who could've pulled it off quite like Cusack.And he fronts a great cast: Minnie Driver, Alan Arkin, Jeremy Piven, Joan Cusack and especially Dan Aykroyd, who chews the scenery with manic glee. GROSSE POINT BLANK is one of those great '90s movies that you just don't hear enough about; it's got a rock-solid soundtrack, great dialogue and it's one of the best comedies of the decade. 9/10