We take a look at an underrated and overlooked gem you probably haven’t seen: Stephen Frears’ The Hit…
With Noirvember drawing to a close and everyone having undoubtedly enjoyed the finest film noir and neo-noir delights known to man, there’s time to squeeze in another recommendation, one which deserves full attention.
There have been numerous films over the years that flew under the radar, which might have deserved more widespread attention or a cult following. Some get it. Crime flicks alone, you could think of Soderbergh’s slick, lithe and delightfully simple The Limey, which saw Terence Stamp returning to familiar ground and getting no shortage of acclaim. Or you could look at the adoration and verbatim fan quoting from something like Jonathan Glazer’s Sexy Beast. These films caught the eye and stood out to cineastes and even to some mainstream viewers.
One film that has only more recently been getting its due (in no small part due to a Criterion Blu-ray release in 2020) is The Hit. A fairly small, almost raggedy but stylish neo-noir hitman/gangster film from 1984.
Here’s the rub: It’s an early Stephen Frears film, a man often associated with stellar Oscar-bait British films like The Queen, but who actually has a pretty eclectic CV, dancing in an array of genres and budget levels. The Hit stars Terence Stamp as a retired criminal who’s been hiding out in Spain after ratting out his employers a decade prior. His past catches up with him when two hitmen (John Hurt and his protege, Tim Roth) snatch him, intent on delivering him to the big boss in Paris so Willie Parker (Stamp) can be duly executed.
It’s a simple storyline with a tidy running time that is powered along by Frears hitting it with creative verve and the vibrancy and flair of a good flamenco guitar player. It also features a vibrant all-guitar score, beginning with an opening (bluesy) theme courtesy of Eric Clapton, before the remainder of the film opts for some flamenco flair (Paco de Lucia) to give the dusty Spanish landscapes and long roads the feel of a Western. I consider myself a film aficionado, but this one escaped me until a few recent nods here and there (it popped up in a Criterion closet video and a few hidden gem articles, if I recall). It has now triumphantly popped up on Amazon Prime (UK) to watch.
Is it up with Sexy Beast or The Limey, or other cult low-tech, no frills (low budget), smart crime thrillers of the 80s onward? Perhaps not the former, but it certainly gives Stamp’s other middle-aged gangster film a run for its money. The difference is, whilst Stamp carries a certain lit fuse/powder keg energy in The Limey as a man not to be trifled with, his Parker here is someone a little more reflective and philosophical.
Frears, working from a Peter Prince script, toys with the notion that Parker is trying to needle his captors, just waiting for the perfect moment to escape. He does toy with them, trying to place a wedge between the elder, jaded hitman and his slightly simple protege/eventual successor. Parker also appears to be at peace with his inevitable end. The past has caught him; running again would likely be futile, but is he really as accepting of his fate as he seems?
So, underpinning this darkly comical hitman neo-noir road movie, you have this reflection from not merely Parker but also Hurt’s stoic hitman at a breaking point in his career. One kill too many, one job too many and repeat, again and again. Roth is brimming with energy as the boisterous wannabe who has a lot to learn about controlling impulses and thinking ahead. Frears puts all of this in an efficient journey of escalating stakes and obstacles, particularly once they take an unwitting hostage in the form of Laura del Sol, a young Spanish woman who barely speaks English and becomes an inevitable, occasionally fiery (survival instinctive) distraction between the hitmen.
By this point in his career, Frears was highly experienced across TV in particular, but not so much in feature films. He’d previously made another slightly forgotten noir film (Gumshoe) back in 1971, starring Albert Finney. Yet, much like Scorsese with After Hours or Cape Fear, it felt like an established director doing what might have been deemed a comparatively simple film (thematically) and having real fun with it. It’s a very idiosyncratic approach with great blocking, occasionally dynamic use of the camera, and just riffing like a Jazz musician. The result is infectiously energetic cinema.
Hopefully, with a reasonably good restoration that it now has, along with its stellar cast, Frears and co will get a bit more recognition for this underrated gem. It might well be that during this period, at least in British cinema, the crime/gangster film had gone off the boil slightly. They never tend to get front and centre at the major awards either (though Roth got a Bafta nod as best newcomer). This doesn’t get brought up in genre conversation nearly as much as films like The Long Good Friday, for example. Now, those imperfect, rough visuals that add personality to proceedings, among some nicely shot night scenes, feel more impressive with an HD gloss that comes with a Criterion spruce up.
As for the late great Stamp and Hurt, it’s also a perfect showcase for two actors with such characterful stoicism. So much enigma and quiet charisma written over their craggy (Hurt especially craggy) faces. It could also be the perfect epitome of a type of film rarely made these days, with casting agents preferring pretty perfection and unspoilt features in protagonists. That’s all well and good if there’s great presence and charisma beneath the perfect veneer(s), but man oh man, watching a film led by Stamp and Hurt with such effortless screen presence just makes me miss an era in cinema where you had to be immensely compelling, and it feels there’s a dearth of these actors now, and indeed nuanced scripts for them to work from.
Fans of British noir, set in eye-catching foreign terrain, will definitely want to check this one out. Maybe once seen as a lost cult film in waiting, The Hit might finally be finding its cult, and if I have to don a cape, figure a secret handshake and lead it, so be it.
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Tom Jolliffe
