Bullet Points: Hitman’s Run
Making decent action movies can be somewhat of a numbers game for some actors. You aren’t likely to see Eric Roberts running around doing many action scenes these days so his parts are a bit different than they were back in his heyday. IMDB tells me that Roberts has 514 acting titles under his belt so you can be damned sure that he has a handful of good ones in there. Hitman’s Run may be one of those. Let’s find out….
Synopsis: A former hitman for the mob, now in the FBI witness protection program, must team up with a teenage hacker in order to protect himself and his new family.
- No time to kill: My absolute favorite thing about the movie is that it wastes no time getting to the good stuff. Within minutes, hitman Tony Lazorka (Roberts) has already decided not to kill a mark, and ends up on the run from the mafia dudes who employed him. A car chase ensues, which must have been the very line written in the script about seven times. I feel like whenever the movie starts to drag just a bit then someone finds themselves in a car driving really fast.
- Family man: The man we met as Tony Lazorka is now John Dugan. It’s a shame that we don’t see him carrying around a 2X4 with an American flag shouting “HOOOOO!” This John now has a girlfriend and a little girl who is already calling him daddy. He still has pretty intense dreams about being found and having to kill a bunch of people but his life looks to be solid at this point. Just wait a few minutes John….
- Hacking in the 90’s: I love watching any movies from the early days of hacking. Whether it’s Neo or Johnny Lee Miller, I dig watching people talk about hacking while punching away at keys like they’re playing Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody in Blue’. The young hacker in this is only guilty of trying to get his father back. He digs into the FBI files for the mafia and uncovers a list of all the folks in the protection program. It probably sounds easier than it is.
- Mark L. Lester loves explosions: You had me at “From the director of Commando and Showdown in Little Tokyo“. If you’re going to have a movie with as many car chases and shootouts as this, you need a director who can really handle his shit. Lester has some serious action pedigree and he lays it out in Hitman’s Run and makes some of these guys look much better in the process.
- Sicilian style: Damian Chapa, who I recognized most as Ken Masters from Street Fighter, plays the evil Paolo Catania. He’s the vengeful son of the head of the family and usually the first man in the room to start shooting. He’s essentially the only villain to get more than a few minutes of screen time and the only one that we really want to see die by the end. You can’t have a great action movie without a great villain but Chapa does his best to make his deadly.
- The “kid”: Esteban Powell plays 17 year old hacker Brian Penny despite being at least 22. It’s not that big of a jump compared to most movies but I would have preferred if he was played just a couple of years older. He’s actually not as annoying as I expected him to be. Most movies with hackers and/or teenagers running around in them find the worst kind of dialogue possible to give to them. Penny starts off bad but grew on me as the movie when on.
- Guns a blazing: The filthy villains kidnap Dugan’s new family and he loads up with as many guns as he can carry and jumps into the fray. I wouldn’t say that this finale is anywhere near the spectacle of some of Lester’s other movies but it’s not terrible. I would have expected a little more badassery from such an exceptional hitman but there are worse action scenes.
The Verdict: I thought that Hitman’s Run was a pretty standard 90’s action movie that was probably about 5 years too late. It felt like it was made in 94. I don’t mean that as a knock on it but if you watch The Matrix right after this you’ll feel like you took a time machine ahead a decade or so. The movie could have used a more powerful villain. One that maybe killed or tortured a few people during the movie. If you’re looking for a decent action flick and you’re a fan of Eric Roberts, you could certainly do much worse.
