Terence Stamp is a force of positivity as a former criminal who snitched on his compatriots and went to start a new life in Spain before being tracked down ten years later by a sinister hitman (John Hurt) and his budding assistant (wonderfully played by Tim Roth in his first feature). This crime tale by Stephen Frears (later of Dangerous Liaisons, The Grifters and High Fidelity) takes us on a road trip across Spain and is a wonderful time capsule of early 1980s Continental Europe - at the junction between provincial idiosyncracy and modern consumerism. Our protagonists are all caught up in the mix between this and their own aimlessness. And although they have various ways of coping with their insecurities and needs for acceptance, they all are more or less prisoners of their own shortcomings. All except Laura del Sol as the group's young Spanish hostage Maggie, who slowly comes to realize she can manipulate the situation. The Hit has both style and substance, even if it never reaches the heights Frears may have hoped for. It's punctuated by pleasant flamenco music from Paco de Lucía and a title track by Eric Clapton and Roger Waters.
Review of The Hit
