I Hired a Contract Killer (1990)

Jean-Pierre Léaud, star of The 400 Blows and Masculin Féminin, plays Henri, a boring, lonely French man living in the U.K. who gets unceremoniously fired from his job of 15 years with zero notice. He coolly and calmly heads home to his boring flat to off himself. After hanging fails and carbon monoxide poisoning fails, he realizes this is a job for professionals.

A cabby guides him to the local murder-for-hire bar, where the resident criminal overlord happily accepts his order for a hit on himself. The criminals are polite and helpful, with top notch customer service, and gently try to persuade him to change his mind. He does not.

The awkward pause is the language of choice, slow inaction the method of delivery, silence of all but the creak and crinkle of the environment the emphasis. It's a talkie, but only barely; it frequently goes minutes without dialog.

With life still ticking along but nothing left to live for, he heads down to the pub to take up drinking and smoking and talking to women. He falls in love with the first woman he speaks to, and immediately decides he has something to live for. He tries to cancel the hit, but both the criminals and the bar they operated out of are gone.

He and his sorta girlfriend start trying to evade the impending murder, and a long series of silly coincidences guides them between nonchalant escapades throughout town. Despite the high stakes, nobody ever moves or speaks with any sense of excitement or urgency. It's like if Jean-Luc Godard directed a Mr. Bean film.

One scene is half music video, with Joe Strummer of The Clash performing Burning Lights in 50s greaser attire. Coincidentally, Joe Strummer also appears in Jim Jarmusch's Mystery Train, which was my backup choice for tonight's movie.

In parallel, we follow the life of the hitman, Jesus from The Life of Brian, which is a mirror of Henri's. He is sad, lonely, miserable, and dying of cancer. Contract killing is merely a job to him, which he does with bored but persistent professionalism. When he finally get the upper hand on Henri, he merely laments life and shoots himself.