Die for you: Why contract killers on screen hit just the right spot

With Richard Linklater’s action-comedy ‘Hitman’ coming to cinemas later this year, Geoffrey Macnab looks back at contract killers in film, and questions why they are rarely shown as villains

Charlize Theron in ‘Atomic Blonde’ in 2017 (J Prime/Focus Features/Kobal/Shutterstock)

In Mr & Mrs Smith (2005), Angelina Jolie’s Jane, dressed in a dominatrix outfit, casually breaks a naked man’s neck. Across town, her husband (Brad Pitt) is simultaneously whipping out his pistol and shooting a table full of poker players dead. Early on during French crime picture Le Samouraï (1967), the imperturbable Alain Delon‘s Jef Costello walks into an office hidden at the back of a nightclub, guns down the owner and walks briskly out again, crossing a restaurant floor as a jazz band plays behind him. Meanwhile, in the thriller Collateral (2004), Tom Cruise’s Vincent is in the back of a taxi making small talk with the driver (Jamie Foxx). He gets out at a motel and moments later a corpse lands on top of the vehicle; it’s his “first kill” of the night. These are just some of the countless examples of charismatic, good-looking stars performing contract killings on screen.

There is something about hired assassins that fascinates filmmakers. They’re rarely shown as villains. Whether in exploitation pictures, art house films, comedies or blood-soaked Quentin Tarantino thrillers, these grim reapers are more frequently shown as loners on some strange existential quest – or as professionals doing their jobs to the utmost of their ability. The same movie fans who are repelled by serial killers like Ed Gein and Ted Bundy on screen are often intrigued by these glamorous freelance executioners who go about their business in such a daring and relentless fashion.

What remains surprising is the uncritical and romanticised way in which hired killers in movies are still portrayed on screen – and the indulgent way in which audiences lap up their misdeeds. In his new comedy-action film Hitman, Richard Linklater promises to expose the hypocrisy of the killer-for-hire genre. These films trade in fantasy figures and steadfastly refuse to acknowledge the violence and venality of their protagonists.