I’ve never really been to any sort of class reunion. Sure, I get the invites once in a while, and I do think about going, but I usually decide to skip them for a wide variety of reasons. Besides, generally the people from my old classes that I want to see and talk to, I generally still do, and the ones I don’t, well, I don’t.
But then again, my issues with going to a class reunion probably have nothing on what Martin Blank (John Cusack) goes through in Grosse Point Blank.
Martin is in a bit of a rut. His job doesn’t work for him as well as it used to, and he’s making some basic mistakes. Looking very world-weary while he’s probably meant to be only in his late 20s, his secretary (an unbilled but hilarious Joan Cusack) and his reluctant psychiatrist (also hilarious Alan Arkin) both press him to go to his ten year high school reunion and forget about work for a few days.
Oh, and Martin is a contract killer. You’d think that would make it hard for Martin to talk to people about what he’s been up to since he disappeared without a trace ten years earlier, but brilliantly he keeps telling people he’s a hired killer, but everyone seems to think he’s joking, sometimes even when a body turns up nearby.
Such is the premise of Grosse Pointe Blank, a dark comedy that mixes both high school reunion anxieties about what to do when your childhood home becomes a convenience store, and the darker aspects of a job for a professional murderer. Martin, for one, has to deal with a professional colleague named Grocer (a delightfully motormouthed Dan Ayrkoyd) trying to form a contract killer’s union, a pair of NSA agents following around waiting for the right time to kill him without becoming “the bad guys” (Hank Azaria and K. Todd Freeman), and whoever else is out to kill him. And that’s without navigating the thorny emotional paths of trying to reforge a relationship with his long-since-abandoned high school sweetheart Debi (Minnie Driver).
This movie is a lot of fun. Cusack is doing the world-weary stuff well while his character gradually starts to warm up to old friends he hasn’t seen in a while. Maybe his life is a mess on every level, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t see a way out. Driver is sweet, even if her role is rather standard for movies like this, but she gives Debi a bit of an edge, so it’s easy to see both why Martin might fall for her all over again and yet she still keeps him on his toes. And then there’s Aykroyd, a man who can recite a lot of funny dialogue at a very fast pace and get some laughs along the way. I kinda wonder what happened to that guy. Sure, he still pops up here and there, but I don’t know how much of his verbal gifts are still being used all that effectively.
Mixing anxieties both murderous and mundane, Grosse Pointe Blank was a really fun movie that just hits the right spot. Maybe the last scene of the movie, as Martin and Debi drive off to parts unknown together, seems a little off, but that’s a small price to pay for an otherwise delightful comedy.
Grade: B+
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