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Grosse Pointe Blank

1997, Movie, R, 108 mins

Grosse Pointe Blank: Review

A slick, mannered and frequently clever comedy about yuppie hit man Martin Blank (John Cusack) who decides to mix business and pleasure by doing a job and attending his 10-year high school reunion over the same weekend. Awaiting him in Grosse Pointe, MI, are the sweetheart he stood up on prom night (Minnie Driver) and a raft of old friends who get a real charge out of Martin's forthright answer to the inevitable, "So, what do you do?" He just slays 'em. Eccentric director George Armitage takes what could easily have been a second-rate exercise in PULP FICTION attitude and gives it a clean, vivid look, wasting little time on the mercenary metaphors (making a killing in business and so on) and keeping Martin's misbegotten, near-surreal sentimental journey moving along briskly. Propelled by a hippest-hits of the '80s soundtrack and Cusack's deceptively subtle performance, this potentially queasy mix of John Hughes-style high school nostalgia and Tarantino-esque cool gets past the gags and ventures into some surprisingly poignant territory without ever losing its brittle edge. Blank's relationship with his unwilling therapist (Alan Arkin) is particularly bracing, and even the bloated Dan Aykroyd (playing a fellow professional killer who's hell-bent on unionizing) manages not to spoil things. --Maitland McDonagh