by Jay Hopler
SAL
How many men out there?
BENNIE
(fear making him more lucid)
Maybe… ten.
SAL
In back?
BENNIE
I don’t know—I think they got a dog in back
SAL thinks to himself a moment.
BENNIE
(desperately)
I didn’t know he was gonna kill anybody, Sal. Lemme go out there before he turns this place into a battleground. Maybe I could…
SAL regards BENNIE with utter contempt. Covering BENNIE’S mouth, he thrusts the knife into his windpipe.
SAL emerges from the study, closing the door behind him
SAL
He really needs to be alone for a while
He steps toward the table, struggling to hide a limp
BOBBY
Of course
MRS. DOWNEY
Some pie, Salvatore?
SAL
No thanks.
He leans to whisper into BOBBY’s ear.
SAL
Take me upstairs, Bob, I’ll explain later.
BOBBY finds the request odd, but thinks it’s connected to “the tragedy.” She rises from the table.
BOBBY
Excuse us, please, but I need to speak with Sal alone. We’ll be upstairs.
SAL follows BOBBY up the staircase, suppressing a grimace with each step.
JACK
Upstairs?
MRS. DOWNEY
It’s a little romantic. Isn’t it?
cut to:
INT. DOWNEY HOUSE-UPSTAIRS
SAL and BOBBY are in the upstairs hallway. SAL points to a door
SAL
Let’s go in there.
BOBBY
That’s my parents’ room.
SAL
Trust me.
BOBBY opens the door, and they enter. SAL keeps BOBBY from flicking on the lights. She looks at him curiously.
SAL
Check and see if your dog’s still in the backyard.
BOBBY
What
SAL
(emphatically)
Please
BOBBY moves to the window drawing the curtain
BOBBY
I really don’t understand any of this, Sal
SAL
The dog?
BOBBY
Yeah, he’s there, asleep in his house
SAL
Any footprints back there?
BOBBY
Just the dog’s.
SAL seems relieved. He steps toward the window, and BOBBY meet him. Behind them on the wall are pictures of her and her brother as kids.
SAL
(struggling)
Look, I lied about a lot of things here tonight
BOBBY
(interrupting)
Sal, I don’t care how much money you have.
SAL is taken aback by the statement.
SAL
I wish that’s all it was. (pause) This is never gonna make any sense to you, but…
BOBBY
What, Sal?
SAL
There’s people after me, and if I don’t make a run for it, they’ll tear this place apart.
BOBBY
You’re being crazy.
SAL
I’m trying to be noble.
He lifts open the window, turning back to BOBBY.
SAL
Don’t hate me
SAL
(confused)
Sal, I—
SAL
Promise me
She moves closer, taking SAL’S hands
BOBBY
Sal, I I… I still love you.
She pulls closer, kissing SAL lightly. He is stunned. Every ounce of hate seems to drain from him. He can say nothing. He just turns slipping silently out the window. She watches as he slides down the sloping roof toward the yard. The dog awakens barking, and almost simultaneously MRS. DOWNEY screams shrilly downstairs.
cut to:
EXT. STREET NIGHT
The BOSS is sitting in his car, DOM at the wheel, when he hears the dog barking. He yells out the window to the men in front of the Downeys’ house.
BOSS
He’s going out the back. Get him
(to Dom)
Head him off.
DOM swings the car around wildly, throwing chunks of gray ice at the men who scramble around the street.
cut to:
INT. DOWNEY HOUSE NIGHT
BOBBY sheds a silent tear as she consoles her mother by the stairs. The men regard the body in the study. MR. DOWNEY speaks as he dials the phone.
MR. DOWNEY
I guess the news was too much for him
JACK looks at his father incredulously as TED regards the nativity scene.
TED
Where’s Christ
cut to:
EXT. STREET NIGHT
SAL runs lamely across the empty boulevard. As a gentle snow begins to fall, his tracks become clearer and clearer. In the distance, a train whistle breaks the silence. SAL cocks his head, and turns a corner with renewed vigor.
The tracks are only a block away. SAL runs down the middle of the broad white street, heading for a long flight of stairs that lead up to the train platform. The whistle sounds again, closer.
SCREEECH! The Boss’s car screams into an intersection several blocks directly behind SAL. He runs as fast as his bad leg will allow, but the car is closing fast.
SAL hits the stairs bounding, as the car slides to a stop.
SAL is halfway up, as the BOSS steps out. The train is pulling in as the BOSS takes aim. SAL is only steps away from the top. BLAM! A single shot catches SAL just short of the platform.
SAL drags himself up the last steps and stumbles into the train
as it pulls out.
INT. TRAIN NIGHT
Collapsing into a seat, SAL holds his gut with both hands. He struggles to catch his breath, as he leans his head limply against the window.
He lights himself a smoke, his bloody hands staining the cigarette. Out the window, scenes of New Brunswick glide by.
fade out
Appendix
HIT MAN MOVIES
The list of hit man movies that follows is by no means inclusive. There are hundreds of films in which the character of the hit man—or some approximation thereof—appears. Most are unwatchable. I have not, for example, included any of the countless action movies that feature some sort of assassin as they do not enrich the subgenre. Rather, I have included only those movies (fifteen, exactly) that are indispensable to understanding the character of the hired killer.
This Gun for Hire (1942).
Dir: Frank Tuttle. Starring: Alan Ladd, Robert Preston, Veronica Lake.
This movie features Alan Ladd in the role that made him a star. He is wonderful—if somewhat too good-looking; don’t forget, in the book Graham Greene was very specific about his killer’s ugliness—as Raven, the hit man who completes a job only to be double-crossed by those who hired him. Robert Wagner re-created the role forty-nine years later in a dismal made-for-television affair, but the original is vintage noir.
The Killers (1964).
Dir: Don Siegel. Starring: Lee Marvin, John Cassavetes, Angie Dickinson, Ronald Reagan.
This film, while very loosely based on the Hemingway short story, is excellent. It features Lee Marvin as the older member of a hit team who is puzzled by their latest victim’s (John Cassavetes) willingness to die. He and his partner go to Miami in order to unravel the puzzle and get the money they believe he was killed for. Ronald Reagan is perfect as the slick criminal/businessman, as is Angie Dickinson, the beautiful bait. Also some interesting small performances by Norman Fell and Claude Akins.
The Day of the Jackal (1978).
Dir: Fred Zinnemann. Starring: Edward Fox, Alan Badel, Tony Britton, Cyril Cusack.
Beautifully written, if slightly overlong, this film features Edward Fox as the as
sassin hired to kill General Charles de Gaulle. The suspense is unrelenting and the film marks one of the few successful attempts to bring the character of the hired killer over into the thriller genre. Perhaps even more noteworthy is that while this piece is filled with action, its narrative integrity is never compromised.
Three Days of the Condor (1975).
Dir: Sydney Pollack. Starring: Robert Redford, Cliff Robertson, Max von Sydow, Faye Dunaway, John Houseman.
Another hit man/thriller film (perhaps the only other successful one of its kind), it features Robert Redford as a CIA bookworm who reads too much into something he shouldn’t have. When his colleagues are murdered by a hit squad, he goes on the run, unsure of who his friends are, who is trying to kill him and why. The movie is saved from becoming another unremarkable entry in the mystery/espionage genre because it is superbly written and the performances—especially Faye Dunaway as the beautiful stranger Redford abducts in order to avoid capture and Max von Sydow as the hit man hired to kill him—are outstanding.
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976).
Dir: John Cassavetes. Starring: Ben Gazzara, Seymour Cassel, Virginia Carrington, Azizi Johari.
This movie should have been better considering it was written and directed by John Cassavetes. It features Ben Gazzara as a luckless nightclub owner who is forced to work off a $23,000 gambling debt as a hit man. His mark is a Chinese crime boss who is at odds with the crime family he owes the money to. Despite the fact that it is the most accessible Cassavetes film, it is dull, overlong, and too dark for its own good. It is interesting mainly because it is the perfect cinematic example of The Metamorphoses Tale.
Andy Warhol’s BAD (1977).
Dir: led Johnson. Starring: Carroll Baker, Perry King, Susan Tyrrell.
While not as bizarre as Backtrack, this movie has its moments. Carroll Baker plays the head of an all-girl hit man ring that she runs out of her home, the first floor of which doubles as a suburban electrolysis clinic. A young Perry King is the professional from out-of-town who boards with her while he waits for the go-ahead on a particularly lucrative job, the killing of a mentally retarded boy. In addition to any number of bizarre things—from the attempted assassination of a dog to a severed finger in a catsup bottle—this movie also features an incredibly disturbing falling-infant leitmotif.
The Hit (1984).
Dir: Stephen Frears. Starring: John Hurt, Terrence Stamp, Tim Roth, Fernando Rey, Laura Del Sol, Bill Hunter.
As a character study, this film is worth seeing. John Hurt is the icy professional sent to retrieve a Mafia informer (Terrence Stamp) who is living under witness protection in Spain. Tim Roth, one of those actors who seem particularly drawn to the character of the hired killer (along with Dennis Hopper and John Cassavetes, also directors of movies in the subgenre), plays the hit man’s psychopathic sidekick. Though the piece is artfully shot and the acting is wonderful—the pace (this movie is dreadfully slow in places) tends to get in the way.
Prizzi’s Honor (1985).
Dir: John Huston. Starring: Jack Nicholson, Kathleen Turner, Robert Logia, John Randolph, William Hickey, Anjelica Huston.
Based on the Richard Condon novel of the same name, this film features Jack Nicholson as the most respected hired gun of the Prizzi crime family and Kathleen Turner as the mysterious woman he falls for who, as it turns out, is also a professional killer. Perhaps the only hit man movie done intentionally as a comedy, it is undoubtedly the most successful black comedy ever made. Some of the dialogue (particularly that between Jack Nicholson and Anjelica Huston) is unmatchable.
Backtrack (1990).
Dir: Dennis Hopper. Starring: Dennis Hopper, Jodie Foster, Dean Stockwell, Vincent Price, John Turturro, Fred Ward, Bob Dylan, Joe Pesci, Charlie Sheen.
Interesting only because of its incredible cast, this is the most bizarre hit man movie ever made. Jodie Foster plays a visual artist who witnesses a Mafia execution, flees, and is then targeted herself. However, the hit man sent to kill her (a sexually repressed, tone deaf, saxophone-playing eccentric played by Dennis Hopper) falls in love with her and helps her escape. For all of the talent behind it, this movie is a grand and charmless failure.
Red Rock West (1993).
Dir: John Dahl. Starring: Nicolas Cage, Dennis Hopper, Lara Flynn Boyle, Timothy Carhart, J.T. Walsh.
Nicolas Cage plays a drifter with a good heart, which is precisely what gets him into so much trouble. Mistaken for a hit man by a bar owner who wants his wife dead, he accepts the contract with the intention of warning the victim and leaving town with the cash. Leaving town, however, is the one thing he can’t do, especially when the bar owner turns out to be the sheriff and the real hit man (Dennis Hopper) comes to make good on the contract. Red Rock West is a dark labyrinth of a movie with each character more evil than the next. Interesting cameo by Dwight Yokum as well.
Shelter (1993).
Dir: Dave Kost. Starring: Ramsey Faragallah, Kelly Herman, Joe Ambrose, Louise Ventrella, Dave Kost.
This beautiful short film is one of the best in the subgenre. Dave Kost is perfect as Sal, the head of a group of hit men who are delivered to the henchmen of a rival crime family by one of their own members (Bennie, played by Ramsey Faragallah). When the hit on which they are set turns out to be a setup, Sal escapes to the home of an old high school sweetheart. The Christmas dinner scene which follows is a study in black comedy as well as the most apt example of a society that is allowed to keep its innocence, its state of grace, in the midst of the most unimaginable acts.
Bulletproof Heart (1994).
Dir: Mark Malone. Starring: Anthony LaPaglia, Mimi Rogers, Matt Craven, Peter Boyle.
This movie was conceived after director Mark Malone learned that organized crime bosses now prefer their professional killers to be nihilists instead of psychopaths. Anthony LaPaglia is brilliant as the hired killer who falls in love with his mark (Mimi Rogers), a woman who wants to be killed. The plot is fantastic as the audience is caught between hoping the woman will somehow find her way out of the mess she is in while, simultaneously, hoping that the hit man won’t do anything to ruin his career. While the film is obviously inspired by John Huston’s 1985 masterpiece, Prizzi’s Honor, it is in no way derivative.
Little Odessa (1994).
Dir: James Gray. Starring: Tim Roth, Edward Furlong, Moira Kelly, Vanessa Redgrave, Maximilian Schell.
This movie is a beautiful illustration of how close and yet completely removed the margins are from the mainstream. Tim Roth plays the lost-son-turned-assassin who returns to his old neighborhood to do a hit. But when he attempts to enter the mainstream in a capacity other than that of the hired killer (he goes to see his mother [Vanessa Redgrave] who is desperately ill), he is thrown back into a world in which it is impossible for him to function. Though the acting is strong, the piece as a whole intelligent and artfully done, the movie has difficulty living up to its own opening—a brutal, matter-of-fact hit done at a bus stop.
Romeo Is Bleeding (1994).
Dir: Peter Medak. Starring: Gary Oldman, Lena Olin, Annabella Sciorra, Juliette Lewis.
This film is interesting primarily because of Roy Scheider' cameo. Scheider plays the crime boss who has contracted the hit on Lena Olin and when Gary Oldman (in a role that has become all too familiar) comes to tell him things are not going as planned, he delivers a miniature soliloquy in which he mentions Robert Lowell’s stay in the West Street Jail. It is worth noting that Scheider starred in an earlier hit man movie—Cohen and Tate—in 1989. A complete mess and a waste of his talent, it costarred Adam Baldwin as one of the most obnoxious hit men in the history of murder; a man only slightly more palatable than his intended victim, a whiny nineyear-old brat who, much to the audience’s disappointment, comes through the ordeal alive.
The Professional (1994).
Dir: Luc Besson. Starring: Danny Aiello, Gary Oldman, Jean Reno Natalie Portman, Peter Appel, Michael Badalucco, Ellen Greene.
Luc Besson’s
first American film since La Femme Nikita features Jean Reno as Leon, a hit man who takes in a little girl (Natalie Portman) after her family has been murdered by rogue police officers. Gary Oldman’s character, the leader of the police gang with a lust for violence and Beethoven, is a tip of the hat to Alex of A Clockwork Orange. Unfortunately, the depth of the Burgess character is missing here, as is the chilling portrayal by Malcolm McDowell of that character in the Stanley Kubrick film of 1971.
Pulp Fiction (1994).
Dir: Quentin Tarantino. Starring: John Travolta, Samual L. Jackson, Uma Thurman, Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Amanda Plummer, Maria de Medeiros, Ving Rhames, Eric Stoltz, Rosanna Arquette, Christopher Walken, Bruce Willis.
Winner of Best Picture, 1994 Cannes Film Festival; the Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay; Best Picture, Los Angeles Film Critics awards; Best Screenplay, New York Film Critics Circle awards; and Best Screenplay, Los Angeles Film Critics awards; this film features John Travolta and Samual L. Jackson as one of the best hit teams in the history of the subgenre. Tarantino leaves nothing out in this free-for-all and, though the scenes are obviously constructed with the utmost care and artistry, there are parts that are decidedly difficult to watch.
