A sort of stretched-out version of Hemingway's The Killers, but not stretched out by way of flashbacks, like earlier screen treatments of The Killers itself, but rather with present-tense delaying tactics. Two London thugs have to transport a police informer from his hideaway in Spain to his scheduled retribution in Paris. For some (easily imaginable) reason, they are not to kill him on the spot. For some (less imaginable) reason, they ultimately choose their own spot. Between spots, the journey is padded out with incidents of doubtful motivation and interest. Mixed in with such incidents, however, and in roughly neutralizing amounts, are some expertly navigated plot turns. And what will finally survive the balancing-out of plusses and minuses (or more often, mere zeroes) are a couple of plusses too large to be offset. The first of these, a scene full of unspoken dread, is the stopover, to change cars, at a gang-owned "safe" house in a Madrid high-rise, already occupied by a gang member much lower on the pecking order (the Australian actor Bill Hunter, in a conventional but sweatily pathetic characterization). Second, and really the core of this elongated short story, is the probing duologue between the head assassin and his seemingly (and infuriatingly) unafraid victim: why didn't he escape when he had the chance? and so on. It is at that point that one might be reminded (as one could certainly stand to be, from time to time) of that most talkily philosophical crime movie, Hard Contract, which some will have been reminded of already for its similar situation of a marked man in Spanish exile. With John Hurt, Terence Stamp, Tim Roth, and Laura del Sol; directed by Stephen Frears. (1984) — Duncan Shepherd
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