I Hired a Contract Killer **** (1990, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Margi Clarke, Kenneth Colley) – Classic Movie Review 2591

Writer/director Aki Kaurismåki’s offbeat 1990 black-comedy thriller stars Jean-Pierre Léaud as Henri Boulanger, a terminally depressed Frenchman in London. It is a splendidly quirky and truly funny movie, a little gem.

Henri is so depressed after being made redundant from his job with 15 years’ service that he attempts suicide, but can’t go through with it. So he pays a contract hitman (Kenneth Colley) he meets in a seedy bar to kill him sometime in the future. It’s to be eventual suicide by hitman.

The Frenchman then meets and falls in love with flower-seller Margaret (Margi Clarke) and then doesn’t want to die, but it’s too late. He finds the bar has been demolished and there’s no way he can get in touch with the killer to stop him. The moral of the story is: Never hire a professional killer in a condemned building!

Léaud is ideally cast in his English-speaking debut and Clarke provides an expert foil. ‘Life is hard but amusing’, says cult Finnish director Kaurismåki, whose Ealing Studios-style script, modelled on the 1950 Alec Guinness comedy Last Holiday, took him a whole weekend to write. Nevertheless, the film is dedicated to the memory of Michael Powell.

I Hired a Contract Killer may not be to all tastes, but it’s hilarious for those who get it. Kaurismåki is a unique talent, and here he trains a beady eye on a startlingly different-looking London, illuminated with eye-catching cinematography by Timo Salminen.

The lyrics of the Finnish song in the card playing scene sum up what has happened up till that point. Kaurismåki has a director cameo as the man who sells the sunglasses to Henri. Palying the jeweller, it is the last film of English actor Peter George Graves, a member of the British hereditary peerage as the eighth Baron Graves.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2591

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