REVIEW:
Grosse Point Blank is the movie that is just quirky enough and just weird enough to actually be good. It’s also the last great John Cusack movie, (not counting Identity, which was more of an ensemble film,) and certainly the last great John Cusack movie to really feel like it was one of his films, with his 80s vibe and his close friends involved. Cusack was an eighties star, with movies like Better Off Dead, One Crazy Summer, and Say Anything. This movie, High Fidelity, and Hot Tub Time Machine were his best attempts at being relevant in the decade to follow. And while those three movies worked, everything else Cusack did afterward did not.
Grosse Point works because it is different. This isn’t just about a hitman falling in love, but about a hitman with a backstory, where he ditched a girl on prom night, now wants to make it up to her, and also has to go to his high school reunion. Nothing about this movie plays it safe, or feels familiar. So even the hitman story, for example, isn’t just about trying to get a target, or having a change of heart about a target, but instead, it’s about warring hitmen going at each other because one of them wants to start a union and the other doesn’t Weird stuff.
The soundtrack is perfectly nostalgic, loaded up with eighties or early nineties songs. And there’s a lot going on here, including at least one too many characters (is the Alan Arkin storyline really necessary or even that funny, for example.) But this movie definitely captures an environment and tone that is pretty special. The hitman in a small town, examining his past and going to his high school reunion-story hasn’t exactly been done before. And this movie deserves a lot of credit for being so creative and out there, and still for the most part, being very funny.