The biggest mistake in casting a film is going for a big name instead of someone who can fill out the character in question. For The Hit List, this is the biggest mistake, only slightly nudging out a clichéd script, poor general performances, and bad cinematography choices. The film could have made it as passable had it not made the mistake of casting Cuba Gooding Jr. as a stone cold killer. There’s just no coming back from that. Even if his past work didn’t make it hard to accept him as an assassin, his utter lack of acting ability makes up for it. In an instant, The Hit List goes unintentionally from a thriller to a comedy, and then fails to be funny.
Allan (Cole Hauser) has just had his world turned upside down; his boss overlooked him for a promotion, his tool of c o-worker who stole his idea received it instead, an investment partner beat him up, and he discovered his girlfriend cheating on him with his best friend. Like any two-dimensional character, he walks into a seedy bar and tries to drink away his problems only to attract the attention of Jonas (Gooding) who asks Allen to jot down a list of five people he would want killed assuming he’d just paid Jonas a large sum of cash. Allan obeys, blurting off expositional information to remind us what each person did to him, and then hands off the list. Jonas disappears. The next day, the people on his list start dying and Allan realizes that Jonas wasn’t kidding about being a hitman. Does he calmly go to the police and tell them what’s happening? No, he charges blindly to the where the next victim is, unarmed, to try to stop it from happening, only to become Jonas’s ride-along passenger for more death and mayhem.
Everything about The Hit List screams film school 101. Attempts are made at creative photography, taken from angles that don’t help or make an impact and really only draw attention to themselves. The digital camera makes everything feel static and there’s a very real and clear indication that whoever did the lighting for the film was clueless. The editing of calm conversation scenes cut with a Michael Bay-like speed and adds nothing, because where there should be reactions on people’s faces there are just blank expressions interchanged with a pensive foolishness.
As if unsure if the audience can keep up with a premise they essentially already saw in Collateral and character motivations with the depth of a kiddie pool, writing brothers Chad and Evan Law, throw in far more exposition than is needed with news reports, police officers, and Gooding’s character’s tendency to talk way too much constantly remind us of what’s happening and why. Things that could have been left implicit are made explicit ad infinitum. There are no twists, no turns, and nothing whatsoever to keep you interested. The Law brothers latch on to two-dimensional archetypes and a few lines they must think are very clever and just reuse them over and over. Yet this and the camera work seem like insignificant errors in the face of Gooding’s presence.
Cuba Gooding Jr. proves incapable of generating the intensity necessary to make the story work. He’s attempting to be a carbon copy of Tom Cruise’s character from Collateral but he lacks both the disconnect, the wit, and the ability to shift between friend and foe that has to exist to make the sociopath in the character come alive. Gooding doesn’t have that range. He apparently thinks that not smiling is all that’s required and thus Gooding has given us one of the least frightening and least menacing killers ever known on film.
Blu-ray Bonus Features
There are no extra features, but with the film in question it seems like an act of mercy. Mistakes have been made, serious ones, and director William Kaufman has hopefully learned that you don’t take a recognizable face for that fact alone. The ability to act is much more important for an actor.
"The Hit List" is on sale May 10, 2011 and is rated R. Action, Thriller. Directed by William Kaufman. Written by Chad Law, Evan Law. Starring Cuba Gooding Jr, Cole Hauser.
