Moviecut—Bulletproof Heart

source: Bulletproof Heart

I first saw this film many years ago when it came out on video. Having just recently bought a copy it proved fascinating to watch it again after so long. The set piece I remembered in most detail was of the two protagonists seated facing each other in an empty warehouse.The emotional charge in the scene is ferocious. The film is a curious work, mixing almost Steve Martin comedy with high gangster genre "Carlito's Way" style drama. I'm not sure if the screenwriter and the director between them completely pull off this trick. Personally I would have preferred it if the comedic element had been dropped. The film concerns an extremely efficient though extremely jaded hit-man called Mick (played by Anthony LaPaglia). He has unemotionally killed so many people that it seems as if violent death and sex, as it were the agony and the ecstasy, for him have merged. (Early in the film he is shown lying semi-naked in bed, and as the prologue to having intercourse he is receiving a somewhat intimate massage from a masseuse/prostitute. As she straddles him he is shown contemplating stabbing her with a pair of scissors.)When he goes to dispatch his latest kill Fiona (Mimi Rogers) only to find that she is positively waiting to be killed he is totally thrown. In her seduction of him he becomes the apparent willing victim, being both tied by the wrists to the bedhead and thrashed across the face; as things climax so to speak he manages to break free. This appears to be his epiphany,the awaking of deeply repressed feelings of love and compassion within him. At this juncture I feel compelled to indicate that in English seventeenth-century love poetry words such as "Kill" and "Come" were interchangeable, and I did wonder if the allusion here was intentional. It seemed so in respect of the ending of the movie. Unfortunately this means that the viewer must plod through all the credits in order to see the denouement. This is ultimately a very sad film as one is left with the impression that Mick is now a completely broken man. He had briefly found love only to lose it again. The only difference being that now he knows exactly what he has lost. As a little aside I must add here that I have never seen anyone either in movies or television drama who cries more convincingly or affectingly than Anthony LaPaglia. The acting of both Mr LaPaglia and Miss Rogers is faultless throughout. The film does have its weaknesses as I have hinted at, but overall is a different and interesting slant on the old gangster/hit-man type story.

I saw this picture under the title "Bulletproof Heart", and thought it a better description of the story than "Killer", the way it's listed here on IMDb. See this one for Mimi Rogers' performance, she'll have you guessing every step of the way with her character Fiona, a doomed con artist who's resigned to an assassin's attempt on her life. When he shows up, Mick (Anthony LaPaglia) becomes a conflicted pawn in a weird cat and mouse game in which he begins to question who the real victim might be in the whole charade. You see, Mick has that existential thing going for him in which he questions everything about his life right down to it's very core. He's one of these guys who philosophizes about the meaning of meaning; as a politician he would have been right at home as a member of Bill Clinton's cabinet. I was actually kind of surprised his contact George (Peter Boyle) wound up talking him into the hit on Fiona. Maybe it was just George's earnest plea to take the job - "Forgive me for asking you to whack somebody, but the last time I looked, you were a friggin' assassin". The capper to this caper turns out to be Mick's erstwhile friend, partner and all around schmuck who turns the table on the viewer at the end of the picture with an unlikely coming of age as a professional assassin himself. Sorry to say, I think it was probably his last job. I'm pretty sure once Mick managed to compose himself, he might have taken on his next self imposed contract gratis.

I've searched for a copy of this movie on DVD in stores, on-line for 10 years and finally located a VHS copy from Amazon. I truly do NOT understand why this movie isn't listed in Mimi Roger's or Anthony Lapaglia's Wikis as I regard it as their best work. I plan to copy the VHS to DVD ands share it on torrent sites. No one else seems to give a flip about marketing it on DVD or I'd have ordered it by now. Never play leapfrog with a Unicorn. I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy. There's your ten lines, Bubba.

How this sensational first feature failed to become a massive critical hit I am at a loss to understand. With just a few characters and a rudimentary plot, Mark Malone has fashioned a stare into the soul as bleak and uncompromising as anything since Last Tango in Paris. Lapaglia and Mimi Rogers make a heart-stopping duo thrust into a situation so replete with irony that it is almost Shakespearean. And to continue the theatrical reference, Malone uses Brechtian chapter titles to distance the audience and make the whole tragedy bearable. Finally under no circumstances should audiences miss the post-credit sequence (at the end) which perfects a classic circular structure and monumentalises the work. 'Nuf said!

Lapaglia is tremendous as the icy hitman who not only thaws from the heat of passion, but burns to a cinder in the process! Mimi Rogers is good as the object of his obsession. This modern noir film should not be missed. Lapaglia stunning performance runs the gambit of emotion and melts the screen!Don't miss it!

Bulletproof Heart (1994) This wears its film noir visuals on its sleeve and even there, in the one clear intention by the filmmakers, it holds back. For one reason, it's in color, but not the noir intense color you might expect in a modern iteration, but a dull and workaday visual approach with grey blacks and soft edges. Too bad, because the visuals were the one hope for making this thing work. The idea is promising--a woman knows she is going to be killed by a hired killer, and she seduces the killer(s) and avoids her death, at least at first (not to give away the end). But that is the entire plot idea, totally, so for an hour and a half we slowly (slowly) get there. There is a lot of "soft *" as we go, and not very good either (not advancing the plot and not for its own sake, whatever soft * is supposed to be doing in a movie in the first place). The script has shades of the clipped dialog and indifference lead character of noir, but maybe the comparison to great films of the past isn't helping appreciate this one. The director, Mark Malone, has a series of five star movies to his name (five out of ten) except his last one, which gets three. This is his first, and it feels like it, with some clumsy breaks in the narrative flow that feel like film school tricks. The writing is painful, the editing lazy. There are better low budget crime and suspense films to cut your teeth on.

This movie is one of the most surprising films I have ever seen. I started once to watch it in Polish TV about midnight. Movie was described in TV guide as horror. In fact I didn't want to watch it but I was not sleepy enough to turn off TV set. Thanks God, I haven't done it.. Beginning - nothing special, rather disgusting... Some guy killed another, later on he tried to kill prostitute just for fun... Soon he is ordered to kill some girl... Seems like C class move, isn't' it? But the story becomes psychodelic. Killer turns out to be human being. His brainless companion becomes killer. The victim wants to be killed... I do not want to tell the story. But it is strictly complete. It's hard to see such well-invented story in American movie business nowadays. "Killer" has an atmosphere of "Crying Game" or "House of Games" in one. In fact - the story is a riddle, nothing looks like its seemed on the beginning... Mimi Rogers as fatal woman is marvellous. Her sad, peaceful eyes stay with you for long time ...

Although just a decade ago, Anthony LaPaglia was a wild guy in movies, not the subdued leader of the hit TV program "Without A Trace." He usually played very profane guys, too. That's certainly the case here in this film which I've always seen labeled "Bulletproof Heart," (not "Killer"). Actually, all four lead actors in this movie were interesting: assassin LaPaglia, love-sex- interest Mimi Rogers, comedians Matt Craven and Peter Boyle. The latter two play comedian-types, I should say. Craven is particularly funny in this movie. Rogers is here mainly to show off her huge breasts. She shows them off particularly in a bondage-type scene that is a bit sick. (This movie isn't exactly The Sound Of Music, morally-speaking. It's pretty sleazy.) The film has a good mixture of drama, humor, sex, violence and suspense. However, it also is a good example of Hollywood's depravity, pagan views and fatalistic viewpoints. Seeing more and more of that with my second and third viewing of this , my rating went lower and lower until I finally canned this from my collection. It's just too sordid.....but, for the first-time viewer, a real eye-opener which keeps your attention.