Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

The Hit List Blu-ray Movie Review

'The Hit List:' a self-perpetuating victim of circumstance?

Reviewed by Martin Liebman May 4, 2011

If it was a joke would it be funny?

Cuba Gooding, Jr. has been hitting the direct-to-video, small-time Action movie market, and he's been hitting it hard. Sacrifice. Ticking Clock. Wrong Turn At Tahoe. Hardwired. The Hit List. None of these are particularly good films, but Gooding is sliding comfortably into his role as a minor Action movie star. In fact, his latest, The Hit List, may very well be the best of this new crop of Gooding/Action/low-budget collaborations. It's a straightforward but nevertheless engaging and, dare say, ever-so-slightly original movie that seems like it's better than it should be, but not as good as it might have been in better hands, much like was the case with Ticking Clock. For whatever reason lesser films than this earn wider releases and greater sums of studio money; The Hit List has what it takes to have been a pretty solid movie, but it was of course relegated to the bottom-of-the-barrel DTV scrapheap of projects. Imagine the movie with someone like Michael Mann or Tony Scott at the helm and a couple of actors like Denzel Washington and Gerard Butler playing the leads. It's not that Director William Kaufman (Sinners and Saints) and stars Cuba Gooding, Jr. and Cole Hauser (Pitch Black) aren't good for the movie, it's just that The Hit List could have been a superior Action film with a little more flair and attention to detail. Coulda, woulda, shoulda, too bad, so sad, next please.

Cuba loves him some 5.7x28.

Allan Campbell (Hauser) is a sharp businessman riding a wave of success. He's cooked up a presentation that's sure to land him that cushy promotion, and he's married to a beautiful young lady. Unfortunately, he's passed over for his promotion; it's instead given to some young hotshot dubbed "the future" of the company. Complicating matters is the problem of a little unpaid debt that he can't afford without the bump in salary. As if his day wasn't bad enough, he learns that his wife is having an affair with his best friend and his marriage is over. He closes his day by stopping by a local pub for an extended visit with Mr. Jack Daniels, and while he's drowning his sorrows, he meets the mysterious Jonas Arbor (Gooding, Jr.) who takes an interest in Allan's sob story. The two hit it off, and once Allan has a few drinks in him, Jonas makes a confession: he's just killed a local talk show host, and he's ready to spill more blood. He'd be more than happy to take care of Allan's problems for him, and for no fee. Just write down the names of the five people you would most want to see dead, Jonas says to him, and thy will be done. Allan obliges, thinking it to be some sort of therapeutic release mechanism, but Jonas is deadly serious. Allan arrives at work the next morning and is shocked to learn that his boss -- the same man who passed him over for the promotion -- has been murdered. He immediately knows whodunit, and he sets out to save the last four people on the list -- including his wife at number one -- at all costs, but Jonas isn't about to go down without a fight.

The Hit List inexplicably opens with some sort of James Bond-inspired opening credits. It doesn't really jive with the rest of the film, but two points for trying something a little different. The Hit List, outside of its crazy title credits, is a solid little Action/Thriller with a flair for the dramatic. A tight, intense script; solid leads; and just the right combination of explosive action and psychological drama are all present, and each an attribute usually reserved for superior pictures, with movies like The Hit List generally left to fend for themselves by simply going through the motions with no real purpose aside from gunfire and explosions. Unfortunately, the film never really develops its antagonist to the point that the movie makes absolute sense by the end, but its deviousness and the examination of the consequences of engaging in a world where the figurative suddenly becomes the literal, where harmless banter suddenly results in dire consequences is well-handled and sometimes even enthralling, if not exactly fleshed out well enough at the back end where the meatier metaphorical and psychological underpinnings should be. The lack of superior development is a real hindrance, but The Hit List is still a relative success in terms of its potent combination of action, intensity, character dichotomies, and psychological tension. A sequence featuring Hasuer and Gooding, Jr. swapping war stories and woe-is-me tales in a darkly-lit pub that is suddenly turned on its head by an admission of murder and a willingness to carry out five more is the film's most chilling and captivating, with Gooding selling an intensely serious demeanor that's accompanied by a deviously and disturbingly playful edge. Hauser, in turn, delivers a fairly standard action hero performance; he runs around well and looks terrified enough, but this is clearly Gooding, Jr.'s show and he nails the part until the film falls apart in its final few minutes.

Indeed, The Hit List in its final act tries to become some strange hybrid that's part Collateral and part The Terminator. The similarities are striking, and even if the film never achieves close to the same level of greatness as either of those wonderful films, there's just enough personal identity in the rest of it to set The Hit List apart. Unfortunately, it seems like the film is channeling these superior movies to mask the script's shortcomings; The Hit List turns downright conventional and goofy at the end, hindered more by the lack of better character development than anything else, and rather than an ending that truly gets to the heart of the matter, it is content to settle for a generic off-the-shelf ending that's nowhere near as good as the rest of the film and leves audiences on a down note when the rest of the movie, for the most part, is at least above-average, if not even better. The Hit List sometimes seems like its own worst enemy; this is a solid movie -- it could have been far better, sure, but it's still not bad -- but it almost seems as if Director William Kaufman had no confidence in the material. This is perhaps best exemplified by an extended flashback sequence only 30 minutes in that basically recaps the entire movie up to that point, seeming to suggest that Kaufman was counting not on his storytelling ability but the jolt of the first major action scene to awaken viewers out of their collective trance. It's as if he wasn't sure the film could capture the attention of the audience from the start, which is a very bad sign, but in this case a sign grossly misread. It's not like that at all; this is engaging stuff, up to a point, but it never lives up to potential both because it lacks the resources it needs and because there's an underlying uneasiness to the thing that negates part of the innate tension within the story.

The Hit List Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Hit List arrives on Blu-ray with an adequate, but occasionally problematic, 1080p, 1.78:1-framed transfer. The film appears to have been shot digitally, resulting in a flat, glossy image that's absolutely packed with excessive, distracting banding. Otherwise, the image is fairly strong; it's crisp, very clear, clean as a whistle, and nicely detailed. Facial textures are excellent, and the finest nuances of starched shirts and finely-assembled suit jackets can be quite revealing. Colors are stable; whether in bright exteriors or in low-lit bars, the palette appears natural, never artificial, and never too bright or too dull. Black levels are solid, and flesh tones are consistently natural. Though there's a major problem with banding, blocking and background noise are kept to a barely-noticeable minimum. This transfer seems limited only be the quality of the source; it's not always pretty, but viewers should more often than not be satisfied with Sony's efforts.

The Hit List Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Hit List's DTS-HD MA 5.1 lossless soundtrack is of a typically-Sony high quality. The film begins with a satisfying and engaging wartime flashback scene where the chaos of battle wonderfully penetrates the entirety of the soundstage. Music is always potent and crisp, every note flowing into the soundstage with effortlessness and from every speaker; the back channels aren't left out in the cold, and the music enjoys fine clarity throughout the entire range. Highs are crisp and lows are pleasantly hefty and never overbearing. Even guitar riffs accompanying the opening title Rock tune slice through the listening area with energetic ease. Background ambience, such as music and television chatter in an otherwise quiet bar, is nicely implemented. High-pitched gunshots emanating from Jonas's FN Five-seveN handgun are delivered with excellent clarity and energy. A barrage of random gunfire in the final minutes -- shotgun blasts, handgun shots, and sprays of automatic weapons fire -- dangerously penetrates the listening area, and a large explosion is accompanied by a potent rumble of bass that's heavier close-up and nicely low but distant when it's heard from further away and stifled through a few walls. Rounded out by perfect dialogue reproduction, The Hit List delivers a top-quality soundtrack that's just as good as many other bigger-budgeted Action movies.

The Hit List Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The Hit List features only BD-Live support and previews for additional Sony titles.

The Hit List Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Hit List is fundamentally good enough to have warranted a bigger production that probably would have squeezed all of the potential from the material rather than only some. The movie lacks confidence but is nevertheless well-executed until a choppy final act harms, but doesn't negate, the overall film. It's much like Ticking Clock; there's a strong story here that's simply not been realized to its fullest. Still, the acting is solid -- Gooding, Jr. is particularly strong until the script calls for him to suddenly become some robot with no real purpose at the end -- and the movie is entertaining and occasionally thought-provoking. It's just too bad there's not more to it. Sony's Blu-ray release of The Hit List features good video and strong audio, but not surprisingly is absent any substantial supplemental content. Worth a rental.