The Story of Therapy Dog Tails 467
Where Everyone Gets a Dose of Puppy Love
MOVIES 3: Netflix Hit Man: Minus 5 stars.
Against my better judgement I watched the new Netflix movie Hit Man the other night. This is the hitman movie - there have been many - starring Glen Powell and Adria Ajona as the beautiful, sexy, lovable and very funny murderers and directed by Quinten Tarantino disciple Richard Linklater. I’ve mentioned the disservice done to American culture and society by Tarantino before. In fact, it was the subject of the most recent Hitler strip a few days ago.
Hitler Session 23
The dehumanization goes back further than Pulp Fiction, of course, but as soon as Tarantino perfected the method, it spread through the film industry like a toxic virus. We’d had glamorous killers before. Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway come immediately to mind. Bonnie and Clyde was criticized in 1967 for glamorizing killers and graphically depicting violence, especially in the end scene, and then it wasn’t long before the glamorizing of psychotic killers came along in movies like The Godfather. The difference was that in those films the murder and violence wasn’t played for comedy. Straw Dogs also comes to mind, a movie that was deemed over the top for its depictions of violence in 1971 but again, the violence was played for suspense and horror rather than for comedy. Then came 48 Hours in 1982 where graphic violence and comedy were tossed into the same mix in the persons of Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy but for the most part kept separate. Tarantino then hit on the “idea” of just playing the graphic violence itself for comedy in Pulp Fiction. What should have been horrifying and revolting instead brought raves from the critics. Since then we’ve been flooded with comic violence, funny murder and hilarious murderers by all of the Tarantino wannabes and there have been many. And it wasn’t just Pulp Fiction. More recently it was the played-for-comedy brutal murder of teenagers in Tarantino’s Manson movie, the one that went out of its way to depict Bruce Lee as a fraud, again for no other reason than the sensationalistic impact it would have. Now we’ve gone further in excising any sense of morality from movies thereby dehumanizing us to our own humanity, which brings me to the lates hit man comedy.
Hit Man Posters
Notice the catch phrase, “he’s not a killer but he can pretend.” In fact, he is a killer and so is she and he doesn’t pretend not to be and neither does she though both killers are depicted living happily ever after as if such a thing were possible. We’ve moved on from the comic killer to the happily-ever-after killer. The catch phrase is meant to be tongue in cheek because while the main character is a killer, he’s not actually a hit man, which only makes all the more unfunny. I supples it was meant to be the clever plot twist. He’s not a hit man but he is a coldblooded killer. He just murders for the usual reasons instead of for money. But a clever catch phase has to accurately describe the film without spoiling that “plot twist.” It can’t simply be wrong. I don’t know if this punch line was meant to be misleading but it certainly misled me. Otherwise I wouldn’t have wasted those two hours on it. I think it was just meant to be amusing because the assumption now is that since this is a lighthearted comedy about murderers, we’re good with none of it having anything to do with reality. The assumption is that the dehumanization has gone so far in American culture over the past thirty years, that we can depict a humorous murder, then say that it isn’t a murder at all and the one who does the killing isn’t a killer, since it’s just all for a laugh and it’s just a couple of sexy, hilarious murderers so it doesn’t matter. It’s only a movie, after all, and movies are pure fantasy, which again only makes it more unfunny. And this is all very deliberate. I’m not saying that these movies are poorly made. On the contrary Tarantino, Linklater and the rest know exactly what they’re doing and they generally accomplish their goal. Hit Man was a lighthearted comedy for ninety percent of its two plus hours with just a moment of hesitation when they have to decide to go through with the second murder, which they do because, hey, why not? It’s just a story and stories don’t mean anything. We tell children stories but they don’t really mean anything to them. It’s just a movie and not even a serious movie at that. It’s a comedy. The actors and director know how to do comedy. It should be disturbing when the people we’ve been empathizing with, laughing along with, throughout turn into coldblooded killers - and you don’t find that out until near the end so spoiler alert - they are killers. But even in that brief scene when they’re wondering if it’s okay to commit murder and deciding that it is, the tone doesn’t shift. It’s pure comedy. It remains comic right up to the bitter end with one liners like the comic refrain “All pie is good pie” or “Daddy was the nicest man I ever met,” spoken ironically by killer mom to their small children as the murderers live happily ever after. There are others but I’m already trying to wipe them from my mind. Again, I’m not objecting to the depiction of violence or murderous characters but then I think stories have a bearing on reality. I’m objecting to playing such things for comedy and pretending that it’s all just goodhearted fun because in actual life there is nothing funny about violence or murder and we’re in big trouble if we start thinking there is - as we already have thanks to Tarantino and co. “Lighten up,” you say? “It’s just a movie.” I will … when the mass murder in America stops and when a con man cannot advocate murder to a large segment of American society and rather than being scorned and rejected is cheered and celebrated by a large segment of the country. There’s a direct line. Don’t “pretend” there isn’t.