The Big Hit (1998)

Dudes' Night again last night... thought about skipping posting this it was just so god-awful... Instead I guess I'll write 400 some words about it... :P Hit man Marky Mark "just wants people to like him!" and get's over his head in debt trying to maintain both his mistress' and fiance's lifestyles, all while both treat him like garbage. To get out of debt he joins his "Funky Bunch" of buddies to ransom the, unknown to them, connected daughter of a, also unknown to them, bankrupt movie mogul. So not only is hit man Marky Mark a door mat, everyone involved in the caper is a dumb-ass. Couple this with the movie going overboard trying to portray these dumb-asses as "cool" and "edgy" in the most horribly cringy (and at times super offensive) ways: this was terrible. But it's executive produced by John Woo so the action scenes are great, right? No. The gun fights usually involved Wahlberg doing breakdance moves (remember, he's "COOOOOL!") while excessive wire work gets applied to anybody shot. This sounds like it could be cool, and there were some hilariously exaggerated shots (pun intended), but the editing of the action scenes was just really poorly done. They'd cut from shots of Mark spinning on the floor, shooting everywhere, to one of him flying through the air, possibly in a completely different room. A guy would get shot and fly TOWARDS the shooter or sideways. I swear there were guys that would fly through the air or through glass for no reason... just guys flying through the air I guess. And then there's the car chase... So many shots where a car rammed something, was obviously seriously damaged, only to have the car look completely unscathed a second later. Also, Wahlberg's hair color changes inexplicably and seemingly at random throughout the movie. From a reddish brown to an almost greyish/blondish brown to a dark brown. At first I thought it was the stunt double, but it happens in non-action scenes as well. Maybe it was the product he used for different scenes, maybe it was the lighting, but regardless it was weird. It doesn't lose that final star because we did have fun laughing/cringing at how absurd it all was. Looking up stats, this unbelievably doubled it's budget in revenue (seriously, W.T.F.!). It was also fun remembering how awful late 90s styles were, and oh god are some great styles on display here. There's really no need to see this movie though, it really is terrible. If you want to laugh AT a movie, there are so many better ones to choose from.