Directed by George Armitage. Written by Tom Jankiewicz, D.V. DeVincentis, Steve Pink, and John Cusack
The yuppie, city scourge of the 80s and 90s, is lampooned to perfection in a movie that excoriates the city slicker’s detached worldview, irony-infested mouth, vain excesses, and complete disregard for human life. That movie is Mary Harron’s American Psycho. George Armitage’s Grosse Pointe Blank, the story of an assassin that heads back to his hometown for his 10-year high school reunion, is its nitwit cousin.
Like the yuppie, its pretenses are immaculate. It features a terrific cast led by John Cusack as gun-for-hire Martin, Minnie Driver as his scorned high school girlfriend Debi, and Dan Aykroyd as Martin’s rival who’s looking to unionize their bloody profession, plus a smattering of character actors showing us with aplomb what becomes of white folks in upper class suburbs.
Like the yuppie, it knows what to say and how to carry itself. A team-assembled script has great exchanges delivered smartly. Its story of how a paid killer finds himself in a rut and decides to quit the biz if it’ll let him is exemplary dark comedy, wacky and punchy lines competing amidst the gleeful action. It swaggers along to its incessant ratatat rhythm, forming a whirlwind of lines, oddball scenes and wild gesticulation that is hard to pull off convincingly.
Like the yuppie, a caricature that turned into a derogatory sneer, it depicts an infuriating way of being. Its thick sarcasm and penchant for irony is only matched by its cynicism. Grosse Pointe Blank may pretend to clown its yuppie characters, but don’t be fooled – this movie is a yuppie, the very thing it points a finger at.
It’s ostensibly satire, depicting Martin and friends as witless Gen X’ers who cast away everything to attain their vain dreams only to grow up and find their world void, with a childhood home turned into a convenience store and his parents either dead or senile, all emotionally devastating facts yet this ghoul protagonist can’t even begin to emotionally engage with that reality.
This is along with its portrayal of murder as something as mundane as buying furniture online and the actual act of it akin to assembling said furniture; or its depiction of its hitman and his burnout likening it to freelance marketing who’s tired of punching out tag lines.
It has all these elements, but as it winds its way through motormouth blabber about personal development and potential redemption you realize it was never sincere: Grosse Pointe Blank is on the side of its vapid, deranged character, thereby staking a claim as an equally witless poser talking big game in fancy duds but saying nothing of importance to itself, to you, or the world at large. Shoot it point blank.
Mikkel Frederiksen 