I have just seen Hitman's Run and it's violent and awesome!

I will try not to give anything away and spoil it for you but basically the plot goes something like this:

The evil Catania crime family orders their local hitman Tony Lazorka (Eric Roberts) to hit someone who is a friend of his. They get really mad when he doesn't do the hit so they go after him. He testifies against them in court and then enters the Witness Protection Program. Under his new name, John Dugan, he gets a wholesome new girlfriend Sarah (Farrah Forke) and a ready made family, Sarah's darling little daughter, Amber, and a nice house in the suburbs. No one in his new life knows that he used to be mob hitman Tony Lazorka.

A couple of people on the Eric Roberts listserv have expressed sympathy for poor Sarah and Amber but I say if you are dumb enough to move in with some guy you don't know anything about, you deserve what you get. Breeders show you the parents and medical records when you buy a puppy so why should you do less checking on a guy?

Anyway, things are going fine for John until a brilliant but totally naive teenage computer hacker, Brian Segal (Esteban Powell), breaks into the FBI files, downloads the secret names and addresses from the Witness Protection Program and gives it to the Catania family in exchange for information about his long-lost father.

This is when John Dugan has to use what he learned as Tony Lazorka to try to stay alive and protect his innocent family. Don't start thinking that this movie is anything like Shadow Men just because there's a nice family threatened by evil wackadoos. Those men in black wouldn't have survived round one with Tony Lazorka!

OK, now here's the stuff E.R. fans want to know. Eric looks really good in this movie and he's the star so he's in most of the 93 minutes. What's also nice is that he gets to do a range of stuff: he gets to be warm and cheerful when he's in the suburbs and he gets to be stone cold and nasty when he's the hitman. His hair is longer in this movie, the way most of you like it, and he doesn't have a beard. I sort of like the beard but I think you can see his facial expressions better without it -- he can't look really angry and do the clenched teeth thing if we can't see his jaw muscles.

There were even more reasons that I like this movie! Right at the very beginning of the movie, even before the title and credits, there's a much better than average car chase scene that is set somewhere in New Jersey. Any of you who have shopped at Paramus Park Mall on a Saturday, especially between Thanksgiving and Christmas, will REALLY identify with this scene!

Later in the movie there's another car chase scene that was almost as good. This one took place in California so there were these great palm trees. It's not like I've never seen a palm tree but I still get a kick out of them. I also get a kick out of listening to the accents of the mobsters who are supposed to be from New Jersey.

Esteban Powell who played the young computer hacker was also really good in this movie and it seemed as if he and E.R. worked really well together (which is what they were getting paid to do but sometimes it doesn't happen).

Several people have mentioned the shoot out in the warehouse to me and yes, I must admit, that you can see the squib thru the bad guy's white shirt way before he gets shot. Lesson to special effects guys: everybody who gets shot should wear a shirt you can't see thru. If you want good contrast with the blood you can't wear anything too dark so try light blue or tan.

So here's the bottom line: If you like Eric Roberts, you must see this movie! The DVD is nice because it has the trailer plus a scene index that is really convenient for going back and rewatching the good parts. I like the not-rolling-by credits on the DVD but the cast bios are really dinky, they might as well not have bothered. This movie is rated R for CARNAGE.

Return to The Updates Page