THE AISLE SEAT - "THE BIG HIT"

by Mike McGranaghan

Sometimes I think movie critics deserve to be considered among the world's great humanitarians. After all, we suffer through a lot of astonishingly bad movies so you won't have to. Movies like The Big Hit. Here's an action/comedy that has very little action and not a single laugh. Who greenlighted such an inane, moronic, obnoxious movie? This is the kind of picture that usually goes straight to video; how did it end up in theaters nationwide?

Mark Wahlberg stars as Melvin Smiley, a hitman with a conscience. Melvin can't tolerate it when someone doesn't like him (the relatives of the hundred or so people he's killed in his career probably don't think too highly of him, another character points out). He swigs Maalox, lives with his annoying fiancee Pam (Christina Applegate) who wants him to convert to Judaism and give all his money to her parents, and fools around with his mistress (Lela Rochon) who serves absolutely no purpose to the story. There's also a geeky video store clerk who hounds Melvin to return an overdue copy of King Kong Lives.

Melvin is part of a hitman group that also features a white kid who talks and acts like a gangsta rapper, a guy who has given up sex with women for the joys of masturbation (ha,ha,ha - not!), and a flamboyant Hispanic named Cisco (Lou Diamond Phillips, in what movies often refer to as "the Lou Diamond Phillips role"). The gang conducts an unauthorized kidnapping where the target is a young Japanese woman with a very wealthy father. She, however, is the goddaughter of the gang's crime boss. He flips out and orders a hit on whoever is behind the kidnapping; Cisco blames Melvin, which leads to a sort-of Civil War within the gang.

I knew The Big Hit was in trouble in the opening scene. Melvin has brought a corpse to his mistress's house and tossed the dismembered remains into the bathtub. The woman comes in and - in the course of making out with Melvin - accidentally puts her foot into the tub, squishing the man's bloodied limbs underneath her toes. I'm not sure what kind of person would actually find something like that funny, but I am certainly not of that kind.

Comedy - or what is alleged to be comedy - actually makes up the bulk of the film. There's an action scene at the beginning and another one at the end, but the center of the movie is mostly a failed domestic farce. Melvin's future in-laws (Lainie Kazan and Elliot Gould) come to visit; there's a lot of inter-familial strife; Melvin tries to hide the kidnap victim from them while secretly falling in love with her; and Pam decides she wants to break up with Melvin. Sadly, Pam and her parents are portrayed with every offensive Jewish stereotype imaginable (the fact that they scheme so blatantly to get Melvin's money even after Pam breaks up with him is particularly disturbing). The Jewish characters in this film are so stereotypical, they make Fran Drescher's character on The Nanny look like she just stepped out of Schindler's List.

When The Big Hit does feature action, it obviously wants to emulate the Hong Kong style of action movies. The director is Che-Kirk Wong, who directed Jackie Chan's Crime Story. However, this movie fails to live up to its intentions. Hong Kong action movies have an added dimension of excitement because the stunts are real: no computer effects, no blue-screening, no miniatures - just real people risking life and limb in a fast-paced ballet of violence. The Big Hit, meanwhile, uses el-cheapo special effects to create implausible action "moments." An example: a car goes off a (styrofoam) cliff and is saved from plunging when it lands on a small branch jutting out from the side. Yeah, right, uh-huh. The Hong Kong movies also rely on the charismatic personalities of action stars like Jackie Chan and Chow Yun-Fat. No one is this movie even comes close to exhibiting that kind of action cool.

The Big Hit is a movie that I can honestly say is completely without merit. It's not funny, the action scenes (quite frankly) suck, and there's not a decent performance anywhere. Even the name of this film is lame. But I can improve it; just put the letter 'S' in front of the last word of the title, and you have a perfect description of what this movie is.

( out of four)

The Big Hit is rated R for graphic violence and profanity. The running time is 90 minutes.