GROSSE POINTE BLANK
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1997 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: GROSSE POINTE BLANK is not sure if it
wants to be a deep allegory or a comedic action
film. John Cusack plays a freelance assassin-for-
hire who returns home to attend his ten-year high
school reunion and rekindles the romance he walked
out on a decade before. The dialogue is smooth but
neither it nor the characters nor the plot seem to
be believable for any place in this solar system.
Rating: low +1 (-4 to +4)
New York Critics: 12 positive, 2 negative, 2 mixed
The last film I saw with such hip yet unrealistic dialog had Kenneth Branagh looking for revenge on his own uncle for the murder of his father. This is another smoothly written but violent tale of a man in his twenties dressed in black who is seeking something different in his life, but there the resemblance ends. John Cusack is Martin Blank, who has been out of high school for ten years, the last five of which he has been a professional assassin. Like Sam Spade he works out of a dingy office where he is tended by a mothering secretary. It might have been fun to see a steamy relationship between him and his secretary, but I think that the American public might not have been ready for that given that his secretary was played by sister Joan Cusack. Martin's profession throughout is treated almost as just another job. His chief competitor is Mr. Grocer (Dan Aykroyd) a cheerful killer who is trying to organize all the assassins and hit men into a sort of a union so they could do less work for more money, but would have to attend meetings.
At the near insistence of his secretary he decides to attend his ten-year class reunion in the posh Detroit suburb of Grosse Pointe. Reticent at first, he decides he will combine questionable business with dubious pleasure by performing a contract hit in the same area. So off he goes to the reunion, but one of his first stops is to see his old girl friend Debi Newberry (Minnie Driver) who now is best known in Grosse Pointe as the host of a local radio program, making strange elliptical comments on the music. When the two of them get together, it is going to be a bizarre weekend.
Of course, bizarre is the word for Martin and just about everybody he knows. To anybody who asks what he does for a living, Martin very openly admits he kills people. The response is always a quip and at first it seems that nobody is taking him very seriously. However, when he kills somebody late in the film, a high school buddy very matter- of-factly helps him dispose of the body apparently without giving it a second thought, as if he was helping Martin change a tire. Often there seems to be logic missing in the plot, but then plot frequently seems to be only a vessel for the clever dialogue. Not that what people say makes sense all the time either. The dialogue, like that in PULP FICTION, is stylized, but somehow it never has the same spark and sometimes just seems to be forced filler. "What do you want in your omelet?" "Nothing." "Well, that technically is not an omelet." The line is neither accurate, realistic, nor funny. But what can we expect from a production company called "Caravan Pictures," and whose logo is a solitary man walking down a road? Unlike in PULP FICTION we feel we are listening in on people who are all style and no substance.
Some of the films better moments occur when the two Cusacks (John and Joan--actually there are at least two more in the credits) play off of each other. It perhaps gives us a feel for what it must have been like in the Cusack household. The screenplay credits John for some of the writing, though it might well be for ad libbed quips. Minnie Driver has a little less of the likable quality she generally exudes due to being just a bit too smooth, much like her father, played by Mitchell Ryan. (Ryan, incidentally, has the distinction of playing in three unrelated major films showing at the same time--THE DEVIL'S OWN and LIAR LIAR.) Alan Arkin has a small part as Martin's analyst, but comes off the most humane as the only person who seems really disturbed by the fact that Martin kills people.
Like most its characters GROSSE POINT BLANK is uneven, hard to believe, occasionally funny, but has too much style and not enough substance. These are people who are thinking more about their next clever comment than they are about killing. The film is entertaining, but its flippant attitude toward murder leaves a bad taste. The film gets a low +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@lucent.com
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