Anyone familiar withChristopher Nolan’s work won’t be surprised to learn that he’s a fan of2001: A Space Odyssey,Blade Runner,andLawrence of Arabia,since their fingerprints are all over his own films. The director’s tastes are wide-ranging enough to encompass everything from the sublime to the silly – who would’ve guessedhe’d have so much affection forTalladega Nights? One of the director’s lesser known favorites isThe Hit,a gritty little thriller that left an indelible mark on Nolan that can be seen in his own movies, especially the first three.
The 1984 release, directed byStephen Frears, was one of Nolan’sTop 10 Criterion Collection picks, a list that also included such certified masterpieces as12 Angry MenandThe Thin Red Line.“That Criterion has released this little-known Stephen Frears gem is a testament to the thoroughness of their search for obscure masterworks,” Nolan raved. “Few films have gambled as much on a simple portrayal of the dynamics between desperate men,” he added, and indeed, what starts off as a sparse little nail-biter quickly turns into a deep examination of life and death.
Ten years after ratting on his old mobster friends in exchange for personal immunity, two hit men drive a hardened criminal to Paris for his execution. However, while on the way, whatever can go wrong, does go wrong.
What Is ‘The Hit’ About?
Terence Stampstars as Willie Parker, a London gangster who’s been hiding out in Spain after giving evidence against his criminal peers a decade earlier. He’s tracked down by veteran hit man Mitchell Braddock (John Hurt) and his live wire apprentice, Myron (Tim Roth), who have orders to transport Parker to Paris for execution. Along the way, they pick up a white Mercedes from Harry (Bill Hunter), a bumbling Australian gangster, and kidnap his young Spanish girlfriend, Maggie (Laura del Sol), to keep Harry from calling the police on them. Myron finds himself increasingly distracted by their beautiful captive, while Braddock keeps trying to kill her. Meanwhile, Parker plays Braddock and Myron against each other by adopting a casual acceptance of his imminent death. What’s fascinating aboutThe Hitis how it becomesa study of how we each, in our own ways, deal with the inevitability of our own mortality.
‘The Hit’ Is a Showdown Between Two Men Coming to Terms With Death
The specter of death looms overThe Hit, both on a plot level and a thematic one. Parker has spent ten years under police protection in order to avoid getting killed, spending his days at a seaside Spanish villa and enjoying the fruits of putting his former criminal boss behind bars, but he can only avoid capture for so long. In many ways,how he deals with his fate serves as a metaphor for how everyone comes to terms with the realities of death:we tell ourselves it won’t happen to us, that we can somehow bargain our way out of it, but in the end,death eventually comes for us all.
On his journey, Parker speaks about his own death with a calm reserve, saying he’s had ten long years to prepare for something that happens to us all. “It’s just a moment,” he tells Braddock. “We’re here one minute, then we’re somewhere else… or we’re not.” Either way, he believes, death is nothing to be afraid of. Yet when the moment comes sooner than expected when Braddock decides to get the job over with before getting to Paris as planned, Parker tries to run away, showing that his acceptance of the inevitable was all just a delaying tactic, and in the end,he’s just as scared of dying as everyone else is.
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At the same time, Braddock is fighting back against his own impending doom, firm in the belief that, having made murder his profession, he can somehow escape his own death. Throughout the road trip, Braddock is constantly confronted with the realities of mortality in how each of his three companions deal with it: Parker, knowing he’s on his way to die, acts as if he’s content with this when he’s actually trying to find a way out of it; Maggie, having found herself in the wrong place at the wrong time, has no intention of giving up without a fight; and Myron, young enough to still think he’ll live forever, is so convinced of his immortality that he constantly gets himself into scrapes with strangers.Braddock feels he can control his own fate by determining theirs, but as the saying goes, if you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans for the future.
Christopher Nolan’s First Movies Walk the Same Path as ‘The Hit’
Before he became king of the blockbuster, Nolan cut his teeth directing a trio of neo-noirs, each one growing in scope and ambition:Following,Memento,andInsomnia.These were small-scale thrillers built around criminals, mysteries, and mistaken identities, drawing influence from the golden age of film noir and updating their stories for the modern era. It’s almost shocking to see that the man who’s most famous for shooting as many scenes as he canwith an IMAX cameracould work so well with so few resources, as he did in the first part of his career.
It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that Nolan is such a fan ofThe Hit, as it similarly does so much with so little. What is essentially a four-character chamber piece set almost entirely in a moving vehicle never feels static or stagey thanks to Frears' energetic direction and emphasis on character dynamics. And just like Nolan’s first three films, it uses the crime genre as a means to explore something deeper about human psychology. As the director said in his Criterion blurb,so much is gambled on the simple portrayal of the dynamics between desperate men.After all, what could be more important than the price we all must pay for the gift of living?
The Hitis available to stream on The Criterion Channel in the U.S.
