I hired a contract killer
J'ai engagé un tueur
Aki Kaurismäki
After being fired from his job, Henri Boulanger decides to commit suicide. After several failed attempts, he wants to get it over and done with once and for all and hires a professional killer. He is suddenly overcome with fear, and for the first time in his life he drinks and smokes, and then he meets a young woman he falls in love with. Finally he decides to cancel hit-man, but the bar that they had met in has been demolished ...
With : Jean-Pierre Léaud, Margi Clarke, Kenneth Colley, Serge Reggiani, Trevor Bowen
Screenplay : Aki Kaurismäki
Image : Timo Salminen
Sound : Timo Linnasalo
Editing : Aki Kaurismäki
Decors : John Ebden
Screenplay : Aki Kaurismäki
Image : Timo Salminen
Sound : Timo Linnasalo
Editing : Aki Kaurismäki
Decors : John Ebden
Production : Villealfa Filmproductions Oy, Svenska Filminstitutet, Pandora Film Produktion
Distribution: Pyramide
Distribution: Pyramide
"The detached tone with which the director set up the miserable declarations, the conspiratorial winks and the blossoming romance between his pitiful hero and a little flower girl is an astonishing particle accelerator. In 24 minutes, clock in hand, life, love, great cinema and blue find a stylish eulogiser, who can move the audience to tears and to smiles with the same precise stroke" (J-M Frodon). Aki Kaurismäki constructs his film like an abstract work with several influences. "It is a question of a certain state of mind. The cinematographic structure of the film swings between Dreyer and Melville, without ever quite touching either one of them in any way" (A. Kaurismäki). And the appearance of Serge Reggiani, one of Melville's heroes and also in Becker's Casque d'or, a film admired by Kaurismäki, is proof of this.