The Hit List (2011)

The Hit List

 

6/10

Starring
Cuba Gooding Jr
Cole Hauser
Jonathan LaPaglia


Directed by William Kaufman

DON’T TALK TO STRANGERS

It’s been a while since we have seen Cuba in a movie worth over an hour of our lives.

Cuba Gooding Jr has been staying away from the A movies, and plunking out B movie junk after junk, but "PRAISE THE LORD" he did Hit List, an exception from the ones we have seen.

This movie is virtually Collateral (Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx), with different actors and a different point of view.

It has a moral, never talk to strangers, especially when drunk in a bar.

The story is simple, Allan Campbell (Cole Hauser) is having the nightmare of his life. He loses his promotion at work to a colleague and then goes home to find his wife sleeping with his best friend.

Fed up, he goes to a bar to drink away his sorrows. At the bar he meets a guy and while drunk writes a hit list giving it to his new friend. He wakes the next morning and the people in the list start to die one by one in the order in which they were written. Now he must stop his new 'friend'.

The killing style in the movie is quite enjoyable if I may say so myself.

Really this is a good movie. If production values were higher i.e. A-movie budget, it'd be even better. The casting in this movie is adequate cause Cole Hauser and Cuba Gooding JR did extremely well making a believable duo and making the other actors look like shadows. The lines in the movie are wonderful and did I mention that Cuba was excellent in this movie? Because He is. The story line is short, simple and well presented.

My problems with the movie were:

1. Cinematography, it was off at times, to be honest I believe the editor and the cinematographer could have done better.

2. Length, the movie was not long but some scenes were an obvious attempt to extend the length of the movie.

3. A horrible James Bond rip-off intro which was just too obvious to miss.

The twist in the movie was not so good, stolen from the wonderful comedy “Nothing to Lose” (Tim Robbins and Martin Lawrence) and you get to see a little of Rambo: First blood, in the ending too (just a little).

At the end you learn one riveting lesson. DON’T TALK TO STRANGERS they may be frustrated psychos looking to kill people. Guess our parents knew what they were talking about when they kept telling us not to talk to strangers.