Dir. Che-Kirk Wong
Wri. Ben Ramsey
St. Mark Wahlberg, Lou Diamond Phillips, Christina Applegate, China Chow
Below: Director Che-Kirk Wong
The Big Hit takes its audience by surprise, with a sucker punch of satirical film references to the greasy belly of the Pearl&Dean masses. For the first half an hour, the preview audience didn't seem to know what to make of it. With some cheap acting, a flimsy script and insulting stereotypes it has the basic starter kit for Hollywood hit, but director Che-Kirk Wong ups the ante with acrobatic gunbattles a la HongKong swordplay and a flailing subtext that refuses to lie down and let the conventions be conventions. Everywhere there are disruptions to the program of mass consumption. The pace falters, it steadies, it cuts the deck and reshuffles. The movie turns hipness against itself, skirting dangerously close to clever parody. Whilst the running masturbation jokes may have some squealing "lowest common denominator!" they do in a way, mock the audience they appeal to. As the guilty snickers and self-conscious groans give way to understanding with an audible 'Aaah', even the lowest-common denominator has their brows raised a notch, Che-Kirk showing just how extensive a language one can make out of Hollywood cliches.
Calvin Klein's poster-boy Mark Wahlberg (also of Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch fame) consolidates his acting career with an adaptation of the up-and-coming kid he played in Boogie Nights. Kung-fu heroics and rippling midriff intact, Wahlberg plays Mel Smiley, a baby-faced hitman who just wants to be liked by everyone. His hitmen buddies are 'Crunch' 'Cisco', 'Vince' and 'Gump' (see right). Together they work for an Afro-American mobster called 'Paris'. You see, it's funny already. Wahlberg's naive sincerity adds that extra pinch of salty surreality to the glossy list of cliches Wong calls upon. In short, The Big Hit goes through all the motions of the Big Action Movie, but it always leaves room for the spectator to laugh at it as well as with it. It does this by exposing the absurdity of big hit narratives. Everything is deliberately overstated, from Lou Diamond Phillips facial contortions, over-hip jive-talk and bad-ass posturing, to the crazy explosions, black suits and rampant cultural stereotyping. The result it The Big Hit is profoundly subversive from the flashy title credits to the collapsing storyline that self-destructs in a post-modern Scooby-Doo style double-take. Even the title of the film is self-depreciating. There is no Big Hit, the catalysing event in the film is a clumsy kidnap and botched ransom demand. The victim's father, a Japanese billionaire, is bankrupt after making the most expensive movie of all time, casting himself as the star. You can hear the producers laughing all the way to the Oscars. Yet another Hong Kong import pays off handsomely.