There was a certain point where this movie just fell apart. I think it was Elliot Gould vomiting on Lou Diamond Phillips in the middle of a kosher meal in the midst of a hostile shoot out. This movie is all over the map.
At the start, the film promises the adventures of a quirky group of hitmen. We first meet them as they stand naked in a locker room and compliment each other on their muscles. They are the sweet Melvin (Mark Wahlberg), the zany Cisco (Phillips), the horny Crunch (Bokeem Woodbine) and the dopey Vinnie (Antonio Sabato, Jr.), who for no real reason disappears after the first major sequence. Fans of these actors should all be happy to know that they spend a lot of time strutting around in the buff or close to it (I guess we can expect that with two Calvin Klein models in the cast).
Four central characters can be hard to juggle, especially if in the wrong hands. To make matters worse, the screenwriter, Ben Ramsey, throws a whole slew of stupid characters into the mix including Melvin's Jewish fiancee, Pam (Christina Applegate) and her neurotic parents (Gould and Lainie Kazan); Chantal (Lela Rochon), Melvin's black mistress; Paris (Avery Brooks), a highbrow pimp, and Keiko (China Chow), a kidnapped school girl. The result of all these characters is an annoyingly loose and convoluted plot.
After giving away his money to Cisco and Chantal, Melvin finds himself financially strapped and facing pressure from Pam. He agrees to join a kidnapping scheme with Cisco, Crunch and a guy named Gump who inexplicably takes Vinnie's place in the foursome.
Soon Keiko is bound and strapped in the trunk of a limousine, and Cisco is demanding ransom from her tycoon father. It just so happens that Keiko's godfather is the same powerful pimp who the kidnappers often work for.
There's also a lot of frantic stuff involving Melvin's fiancee, her parents and his mistress. Let's not forget the random video store clerk taunting Melvin to return his video and the half-baked romance that develops between Melvin and Keiko. A scene of the two of them stuffing a chicken with highly suggestive strokes is not erotic but just really strange.
It's obvious that the writer had grandiose visions of a film that encompassed comedy, action and style, but "The Big Hit" just can't pull it off. It can't even come close. Not only is the material here poor, it's spread thin too; so any redeeming qualities are pretty much lost.
Somewhere in the core of this movie is a very amusing premise: what happens when the idiosyncratic matters of suburbia clash with the lawless world of hitmen?
Every now and then the movie picks up on this, and when it does, everything works pretty well. There's a fun sequence which depicts the uniformity of suburban life on a Saturday morning: dozens of men synchronously emerge from their garages to mow their lawns. This is contrasted with Melvin trying to get rid of two bags of hacked up humans. These moments in the film are amusing and even slightly satirical, but often they are ruined by ludicrous subplots.
The writer tries to give Melvin some depth, but it is a failed effort. Melvin talks about how he doesn't like to upset people and then goes off and kills them. How did this guy wind up as a hitman? That psychological paradox would be enough for a decent movie, but it just doesn't fly here. However, Wahlberg does a nice job making Melvin humbly likable, a la Dirk Diggler.
Chow also turns out a surprisingly good performance in her flimsy role. There's not much for her to do other than prance around in a Catholic schoolgirl's uniform (even though she is a college major in microbiology) and be seductive, but despite such limitations, Chow maintains a strong appeal and charisma.
One of the annoying things about the film is its blatant attempt to be a hybrid of "Pulp Fiction" and "Grosse Pointe Blank." Unfortunately the intelligence that went into those films is completely lacking here. The snappy dialogue sounds unnatural and stupid. Do people really talk this way? Probably not. To the film's credit though, some of the lines were funny and I did laugh occasionally.
There is also an unusual amount of stereotypes that pop up all throughout the film: Japanese, Jews, blacks, women and even preppies. These portrayals are sometimes so simplistic and over the top that the film often resembles the exploitation flicks of the 1970s.
As for the action, not even that is done very well. Director Che-Kirk Wong is a fan of close-ups and quick shots -- it's supposed to be an American version of those Hong Kong action hits. That sort of style doesn't translate well in chase scenes when the audience has to know where the good guys and the bad guys are in relation to each other. If all we see are a bunch of angry faces and then bodies flying, it's kind of hard to get into what's going on. In later scenes the film goes haywire as Melvin and Keiko find themselves in a car balancing tentatively on a branch over a ravine.
There are so many flaws with this movie that it is hard to even explain them all. Even the title is flawed. This movie is not about a big hit; it's about a kidnapping. But like the rest of the movie, the writers just didn't seem to be putting much thought into what they were doing.
