Grosse Pointe Blank

A disillusioned professional assassin attends his ten-year high school reunion in his Michigan hometown to rekindle romance with the girlfriend he stood up on prom night, all while juggling an active hit contract and rival assassins.

The movie hitman always exhibits several common traits. Like the Schwarzeneggerian action hero, he is a calm, collected killer who manages to crack one-liners about that most morbid of topics: death. And he seems to get away with — if you’ll excuse the expression — murder, without anyone ever realizing that, when he says he’s a professional killer, he’s not kidding. The hitman this time is played by John Cusack and the main difference between this and other hitman films is that GROSSE POINTE BLANK is a high-minded satire centered around Cusack’s visit to his 10-year high school reunion.

Cusack has disappeared from the town in which he grew up, leaving everyone to wonder what’s become of him, especially his bitter ex-girlfriend (Minnie Driver). He stood her up for prom and she hasn’t seen him since. Now all she has to her name is a low-rent radio show on 79.5, a frequency which doesn’t even exist on radio receivers. When Cusack shows up after all that time away, Driver can’t talk to him in private. She puts him on the air instead, more interested in entertaining the listeners than working out her personal problems with Cusack. It serves as a buffer between her public and private lives.

Cusack, like Romy and Michelle, doesn’t want to go to his high school reunion, but his secretary forces him to go. The secretary, played by Cusack’s sister Joan, is one of the enjoyable characters that lend GROSSE POINTE BLANK its comic charm. Another is Dan Aykroyd, who plays the villain of the film, a rival hitman who wants Cusack to join his union of professional killers. They’ve gone without benefits for too long.

Cusack finally agrees to head for his reunion because he’ll be in the area for a job anyway. So he stops in and has a few bizarre scenes with Driver before those two become hot and heavy again. He also meets a few old friends, including another of the great comic supporters, Jeremy Piven. All the while, a few mysterious men are following Cusack for reasons that become clear later. This subplot takes away from the comedic intelligence in favor of the traditional gunfight ending.

The main trip-up of GROSSE POINTE BLANK is that, despite its great cast and interesting premise, it has too much convention. The Cusack-Driver romance is predictable, and so is the Cusack-Aykroyd conflict. Whenever any of that plays out onscreen, the movie turns mediocre. GROSSE POINTE BLANK works when it gives us the biting satire on the politics of murder and how pathetic all the high school people are 10 years after graduation.

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Martin Q. Blank (John Cusack) is a weary freelance assassin experiencing an existential crisis and losing focus on the job. Following a botched hit in the Caribbean caused by a rival hitman named Grocer (Dan Aykroyd), Martin consults his reluctant, terrified therapist, Dr. Oatman (Alan Arkin), who advises him to take some time off. His hyper-competent assistant, Marcella (Joan Cusack), suggests he accept an easy assassination contract in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, while simultaneously attending his upcoming ten-year high school reunion.

Grocer attempts to force Martin into joining a newly formed hitman union designed to eliminate freelance competition and pool resources, but Martin bluntly rejects the offer, making himself a marked target. Arriving in his upscale hometown, Martin finds his childhood home replaced by an Ultramart convenience store. He reconnects with his neurotic former high school buddy Paul Sperry (Jeremy Piven) and seeks out his high school sweetheart, Debi Newberry (Minnie Driver), who works as an indie radio DJ and harbors deep resentment after Martin abruptly vanished on prom night a decade earlier.

As Martin tries to rekindle his connection with Debi and truthfully tells old classmates that he kills people for money—a confession everyone laughs off as deadpan irony—two federal agents and a vengeful Basque hitman named Felix La PuBelle track him through town. When Martin opens his target dossier, he is stunned to discover that his assigned mark is none other than Debi’s father, Bart Newberry, who is about to testify in an embezzlement case against corporate racketeers.