hired to kill

The premise of Hired to Kill is so frankly fabulous, you know going in there’s almost no chance the movie will actually live up to it… because if it did, it would be the stuff of cinematic legend, rather than a pseudo-cult action flick of virtually nonexistent reputation. Brian Thompson - one of the punks from the opening of The Terminator, the villain from Cobra (“I WANT YOUR EYES, PIG!”), and the alien bounty hunter from the early seasons of The X-Files - plays mercenary Frank Ryan, hired by… well, let’s just say “American interests” to topple Michael Bartos (Oliver Reed), corrupt dictator of the fictitious South American island stronghold of Cypra. In order to pull off this particular suicide mission, Ryan poses as renowned homosexual designer “Cecil Thornton,” accompanied by a half-dozen hand-picked female mercenaries (most of whom he found rotting in various hellholes, such as Turkish prison, San Quentin, and a Sardinian asylum) who pretend to be the models for the new fashion line he’s debuting.

Don’t mind me… I’m just over here laughing my ass off. “Nothing is perfect when women are involved,” Ryan grumbles early on. Hired to Kill, which was directed - or maybe co-directed (the Arrow packaging can’t even seem to decide) - by Greek filmmaker Nico Mastorakis, cobbles together just enough entertainment value to be considered a minor guilty pleasure, but it’s hardly the transcendent action-exploitation classic it might have been. Thompson, a medium-rare ribeye of an actor, certainly fits the part - with a jawline that looks as if it were crudely hammered into shape over a blacksmith’s anvil and a physique that’s so swollen a pinprick might cause it to burst like an overinflated balloon. He was legitimately creepy as the psychotic “Night Slasher” in Cobra (so sweaty and strung out, you could almost see his brain boiling in his skull), but has all the range and screen presence of an oak stump here. Ostensibly, he’s supposed to be playing Thornton as overtly gay… but aside from moussing his hair and tying a sweater around his neck, he adjusts his body language mere fractions of an inch. It’s not exactly Pacino in Cruising.  

If there’s a sliver of thematic inspiration to be found, it’s the way in which Mastorakis teases the homoerotic subtext of 80s action movies to the surface and renders it literal. In the film’s most oddly pitched yet provocative scene, Bartos attempts to test Ryan’s sexual resolve by baring a woman’s breasts in front of him… only for Ryan to turn the tables by planting an impromptu lip-lock on his clearly unnerved host. Reed, slumming for a paycheck, is a letdown; he’s armed with a magnificent mustache (he looks like former President William Howard Taft crossed with Julius Pringles), but those anticipating some major league scenery chewing are apt to be disappointed. His villainy is largely by-the-numbers. Remarkably, the film somehow wrangled multiple Oscar winners into the cast - George Kennedy (showing just how far basic professionalism and competency goes in a movie like this) as Ryan’s handler, and Jose Ferrer as the incarcerated revolutionary known as “The Brother” who Ryan aims to spring. Go figure. ​

The biggest letdown is the girls themselves… a would-be collection of Inglourious Bitches, thinly sketched - both in terms of character and skillset (much is made of the mute Katrina’s prowess with a blade… so of course she does almost nothing with a blade). “You’re here to look good, move well, and kill quick” Ryan declares, before one of several sexy firearms-and-catwalk montages. The movie blends phony female empowerment and casual misogyny in that particular way only action films from the late-80s/early-90s could. Mastorakis was supposedly working with a much higher budget than he was normally accustomed to, but while the action spectacle is relatively serviceable, the stylistic gloss is largely nonexistent. It’s a visually banal production. At times, the story feels well-attuned to the tittering inanity of its premise (the opening shot is of a slumbering Ryan blowing away his ringing telephone), but the movie is unwilling (or perhaps simply not clever enough) to embrace full-blown lunacy. Arrow, for better or for worse, has never been shy about championing this sort of obscure genre gunk. One goes into a film like Hired to Kill relatively clear-eyed about its prospects, but you can’t help but look at its deluxe Blu-ray special edition and feel as if, on some level, you’re being served cat food while being assured it’s filet mignon.