Stephen Frears (1984)
The Hit begins in London in the 1970s. A man called Willie Parker gets dressed, has breakfast and is hustled into a car by a group of other men. They’re all obviously professional criminals; Willie is being driven to court to give evidence against other former partners-in-crime. The latter sit in the dock impassively until, when Willie steps down from the witness box, they burst into a sarcastic rendition of ‘We’ll Meet Again’. The action moves on ten years and to Spain, where supergrass Willie now lives, set up there by the British police and minded by a Spanish police officer. Four local youths abduct Willie (killing his minder in the process) and hand him over to a pair of British hitmen: their job is to get Willie to Paris and deliver him to the gangland boss whom Willie’s evidence helped put away – in other words, to deliver Willie Parker to his death. The hitmen are Braddock (who’s seen it all and world-weary as a result) and Myron (a keen but hopeless novice). They make a detour to what they think is a safe house in Madrid but holed up there are Harry, an Australian gangster, and his decades-younger Spanish girlfriend, known as Maggie. Willie, determined to make things difficult, reveals his identity to Harry. Because of this (I think), Braddock kills Harry and kidnaps Maggie before getting back on the road. By the time the action reaches the Spanish-French border (and the end of the film), Willie Parker, Myron and Braddock are all dead.
The opening sequences in London look to announce a conventional realistic thriller. The block of flats from which Willie and his retinue emerge might be the ones you’ve seen in any number of British television police procedurals. Once the action moves from England, however, The Hit becomes a very different movie, and an ambitious one. Stephen Frears, with the help of his cinematographer John A Alonzo (best known for Chinatown), uses the Spanish landscape to express both the shift away from realism and a sense that Braddock and Myron – unlike the indigenous Maggie and the acculturated Willie Parker – are operating in a foreign country. Willie is a voracious reader. He has a book at the breakfast table before his appearance in court and his solitary life in Spain allows him to indulge his interest: the home that his kidnappers disturb is crammed with books. During his years abroad, Willie has had time and cause to think too, and he’s fond of philosophising. His seeming acceptance of death – of the fatal revenge that the men he sent to jail will, sooner or later, take – makes him, from Braddock and Myron’s point of view, an enigmatic and disarming passenger.
Frears and the screenwriter Peter Prince subvert expectations of the crime thriller and particularly of the lethally efficient way in which hitmen are assumed to operate. There’s plenty of action in The Hit but the characters spend at least as much time talking. Opportunities to dispatch Willie and Maggie immediately are repeatedly not taken. Braddock and Myron never reach their destination. The metaphysics of organised crime is an interesting idea; The Hit didn’t prosper commercially on its original release but, at this distance in time, it can be seen as an influence on Tarantino as well as on more specifically kindred British movies like Sexy Beast. The Mr Big – his name is Corrigan – who wants to bring Willie Parker to criminal justice is played by Lennie Peters, of Peters and Lee fame. (Corrigan appears only in the courtroom scene early on and doesn’t have a line of dialogue.) Because Lennie Peters was known to have worked at one time for the Krays, his casting is resonant but some of the other casting and acting in The Hit undermines what Frears and Prince seem to be trying to achieve. In one of his first screen roles, Tim Roth as Myron has a few good moments (such as drinking quietly at a bar where he’s being threatened by a group of young Spanish men) but, for the most part, he pushes too hard to convey Myron’s mixture of viciousness and cluelessness. Bill Hunter’s lived-in features and seedy quality are right for Harry but his line readings sound like line readings. I think this is also true, at a much more skilful level, of John Hurt as Braddock, although he’s marvellous at expressing in his face and bearing the man’s weltschmerz, Braddock’s increasing sense of his own futility. Because these actors come across primarily as actors – people who talk and express feelings for a living – the novelty of metaphysically articulate hoods isn’t all it might be.
Terence Stamp’s interpretation of Willie Parker is more successful, partly because Willie is meant to be anomalous, and knows it. Stamp’s accent moves about a bit between Cockney and educated but that seems right too for the autodidact Willie. Frears also uses Stamp’s star looks and magnetism to good effect (dressed almost throughout in white shirt and jeans, he’s back in Billy Budd costume). When Willie stands admiring the natural beauty of a waterfall, it’s not surprising that Braddock can’t bring himself to pull the trigger. Willie’s death is a truly sad moment for a mixture of reasons. He is finally fearful (he was ready to die in Paris but not in the Spanish back of beyond); the moment is anti-climactic; and the light Terence Stamp brings to the screen has gone out. As Maggie, Laura del Sol is highly effective. Apart from some Spanish matron extras, she is the only woman in the cast and a powerful sensual presence: as a result, the film’s ending – Maggie’s survival – feels like the outcome of a sexual battle. There’s a startling sequence when Braddock and Maggie are alone in the car together, he in the front and she in the back. She bites into his hand and won’t let go. When Willie and Myron return the latter says he’s hungry and so must Maggie be. ‘She ate earlier’, Braddock replies.
2 April 2014
