Very early in his career, the Finnish auteur Aki Kaurismäki established an aesthetic for his films in colour that has held for decades now: the characters are blue-collar people struggling to get by, and whatever emotions they feel, their lines of hatred, love, hope, or disappointment are communicated in an utterly deadpan, monotone fashion. The scenery is usually drab industrial buildings and rusting dockyards. Kaurismäki's 1990 film I HIRED A CONTRACT KILLER moves that formula, developed in his native Helsinki, to London. This is not the posh London of the royal family, bankers or socialites. Kaurismäki managed to find completely dilapidated locations that I would have never imagined to exist in London of that time (though no doubt they've long since been gentrified beyond recognition at this point). Henri Boulanger (Jean-Pierre Léaud), a timid Frenchman living in London with no apparent friends or surviving family, has worked for fifteen years for a state utility. When he is made redundant in a bit of Thatcher-era privatization, he feels he has nothing more to live for. He attempts suicide twice, both tries ending in morbidly humorous failure, and he lacks the courage to try any further. He decides to enter the East End criminal underworld and to hire a paid assassin to kill him. The mob boss takes Henri's money and tells him it will be done through a subcontractor. But whe…

"Henri" (Jean-Pierre Léaud) is so down in the dumps that he decides it's time to end it all. Not suicide, though - nope. He decides to pay a local gangster £1,000 to do the job in the style of an hit! OK, money's money thinks his would be assassin so the job is assigned to his veteran enforcer Kenneth Colley - but it turns out that he hasn't his problems to seek either. To make matters even more complex, "Henri" is sitting in the pub - awaiting what he hopes will be the inevitable - when he meets "Margaret" (Margi Clarke). She's trying to make a living selling flowers and after a brief chat, well might it be possible that something may come of this friendship that might cause him to have a change of heart? Can he even have a change of heart? There's refund mechanism if the job fails - but if he cancels it? The threads of the three principal characters are woven engagingly together here as what initially looked like a rather daft fait accompli starts to develop into something altogether more characterfully light-hearted. Margi Clarke never failed to bring some edgy charisma to the screen and here she gels well with a Léaud whom I don't think I've ever seen doing a part in English before. His vulnerabilities, clumsiness even, with that tongue help to add a piquancy to his increasingly awakening persona. This also benefits from a brevity. At just shy of eighty minutes, it moves al…

Browse discussions about “I Hired a Contract Killer”

Jump to Reddit for live threads on this title.