Grosse Pointe Blanke, Ae Greate Filme

I only remember that Grosse Pointe Blank is my most favorite Movie of the moment when I'm watching it. I'm like that with women, dogs, sports teams and currency... and women.

What appeals to me, besides the gratuitous violence and sadism, is the reaffirmation that ... 'you can never go home again.' Well, I can't, but my kids have no problems with it, because we don't have locks on the back door.

John Cusack plays Martin Blank, who leaves Minnie Driver (you should always have a spare minnie driver in your golf bag) in the lurch the night of the Senior Prom to run off and join the army where, big surprise, his lack of a moral foundation allows them to train him as a killer, for use by the CIA. After serving his hitch, he civilianizes himself and becomes a private practice hired killer. This makes perfect sense because as a soldier he probably was only making a sergeant's monthly pay for killing people (sure, plus room & board, but still...), while in private practice you've got to figure five figures for each hit. (And it's never clear in the movie how much of his income is taxed. He'd want to declare the minimum so that he'd get some Social Security money later.)

In the meantime, Minnie got married and divorced and is back home at the same house where Martin Blank stood her up on Prom Night. (Her apartment building burned...) And she's a DJ and it's at her radio station where Martin walks back into her life. From this viewer's perspective, they did a great job of portraying this squiffy situation. Remember when you walked back into the life of someone who ten years earlier you were intensely involved with, but suddenly disappeared with no explanation? Yeah, it was just like that!

The back story has one loner assassin, a two man assassin team, and a five man assassin team all gunning for him, as Martin is supposed to be doing a job right there in Grosse Pointe. Only he's so preoccupied with Minnie Driver and his life (as evidenced by his interactions with Alan Arkin as his psychiatrist, that he never opens the assassination assignment file until after the ten year Reunion at the high school, where Martin finds a ten year old mj joint he hid in his locker just before getting into a scuffle with the loner assassin and killing him with a pen one of his classmates had just given him, in case Martin ever needed a lawyer. Minnie Driver pops into the scene just at Martin is withdrawing the pen from the loner assassin's carotid artery, and wouldn't you know it, she forms the wrong impression! Women!

The loner assassin's body is wrapped up in a pep banner and an old school buddy, now in real estate, helps Martin carry the body down to the school furnace, while 99 lufteballon is throbbing in the background. Then the two buddies have a drink and promise (meaninglessly) to stay in touch.

Now thoroughly bummed out, Martin goes back to his motel room and early the next morning finally gets around to opening the assignment file. OMG! The intended target is Minnie Driver's dad! Holy Bats, Shitman!

Martin rushes over and foils the planned while-the-target-is-out-jogging attempt and he and his future F-i-L skidaddle back home, followed by the duo & team assassins. Martin suddenly begins opening up to Minnie emotionally (knowing that this heart-on-his-sleeve approach as he's gunning down men who want to kill her father is bound to soften her flinty heart) and while she initially appears unaffected, after he finishes killing seven men for daddy, she caves in and agrees to marry him. Her father, selfishly dazzled by Martin's life saving prowess, spontaneously announces that Martin has his blessing, while still hunkered down in the bathtub where he was hiding.

There's a jump cut from that scene to the young couple, apparently that same afternoon, riding out of town in Minnie Driver's convertible. Hard to believe since I counted over 400 rounds of ammunition busily making swiss cheese of the five dead bodies and the fine paneling, crown molding, hardwood floors and double pane windows of the Driver residence. One has to imagine that the police would at some point want to do a one or two page report for their files.

The essence of the movie, beside you can't go home again, is that life, under a very malleable set of various and sundry circumstances, which only the experiencer can judge, is worth living. (The downer obverse is that sometimes you have to let people decide that life isn't worth living. A corollary is that sometimes someone else being alive makes your life not worth living, from which three paths extend, die, kill or do nothing. This would make a good musical!)

About 16 minutes after I hit 'publish post' I'll forget about Grosse Pointe Blank, but eventually I'll see it or one of my other two all time favorites. If it's one of the other two, Thief or Let It Ride, I'll be sure to tell you all about it.