439 - Grosse Pointe Blank - 5 stars
This film kinda snuck under the radar. I always liked it, but this time I loved it.
Cusack makes for an incredibly likeable lead despite being a hitman. Probably his finest on screen performance. Martin Blank has become jaded with the work he is doing so takes on once last job, stopping by his 10 year school reunion on the way, revisiting his lost love in the process.
Strong support from Arking, Driver, a pre-Entourage Piven and a terrific turn by Dan Akroyd as a rival assassin, all making great use of a cool, razor sharp script that proves that attending your high school reunion can be murder.
The icing on the cake is the fantastic all 80's soundtrack in keeping with the nostalgia theme of the reunion. One of the best movie soundtracks of the nineties.
Sometimes a film is in the right place at the right time to have a major effect on you, or cause you to see or interpret something differently from previous viewings. Grosse Pointe Blank was in that place at that time tonight.
I've seen this film several times but this time when John Cusack held the baby and they stared at each other, what happened would be what Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction would call "a moment of clarity".
I think it was the fact that Martin Blank was attending his high school reunion and re-evaluating where his life was headed and I could see a lot of myself in him... apart from being a hitman of course.
The unescapable fact that I am about to turn thirty, the big 3 - 0. It throws into perspective what one has achieved and not achieved, where is my life headed, etc, etc.
Relationship-wise I have only had one meaningful relationship, my first love, but between work, my new hobby of musical theatre and this film challenge, there isn't much time to meet that special someone.
Work-wise I feel that I have tried my best to make The Belmont a success and hopefully the cinema-going public in Aberdeen would agree with me but academically I could consider my time at University a disappointment as I left with a third class degree. I'll admit that I didn't have the desire and motivation at Uni, due to the fact that I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with my life and ended up doing a degree and classes in a variety of subjects.
If I was to do it all again I have no doubt in my mind that I would study film or film journalism. Between this blog, the reviews and articles that I write for Picturehouse and the podcast, I finally feel as if I have found something that I'm good at. I love doing it and would love to take it further. I'm not saying that I'll be writing for Empire magazine soon or will be the next Mark Kermode but at least I know what I'm meant to do with my life. It has taken a long time but better late than never!
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